Light Versus Dark
by LittlePippin76
Summary: John's daughter, Scarlet Watson, has a run in with an old, old foe. There will be drama and anguish for all concerned. From the canon of BBC's Sherlock and my previous FanFic, Just For Fun, but can be read as a stand alone. Please enjoy. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello. Good evening.**

**The character of Scarlet Watson is established in another fic; Just for Fun, but this piece can stand alone.**

**For any new readers, a short biography of Scarlet is this: She was born to John and Mary Watson, but her mother, Mary, died when she was eight weeks old. John struggled as a single parent for several years, eventually agreeing to move back into Baker Street with Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock inserted himself into Scarlet's life with the assumed role of 'Stepfather'. John and Scarlet never found a reason to move back out again. **

**In this story, Scarlet is seventeen.**

**The feel of this one is substantially different to that of 'Just For Fun'. There is quite a lot more drama and anguish. There's quite a lot less 'funny'.**

**I hope that you enjoy it non-the-less.**

**Final thing to say; I love reviews. I intend to respond to all of them personally (unless they're unsigned, or you tell me not to), but I won't be using author's notes other than in this case right here. The reason for this is that this story is pretty much finished, though I intend to publish on a daily basis. This change in style for me means I can't respond to suggestions and prompts in the way I have before. Please don't let you put this off reviewing! Reviewers are muses.**

**DISCLAIMER – the characters of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes and a number of additional characters come from the BBC adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. **

**The character of Scarlet Watson is mine.**

Chapter 1

Sherlock Holmes walked beside Scarlet Watson along the paths in Regent's Park. They were making quite a pace though she was choosing their route at random. They'd been on this walk for nearly an hour and Sherlock was beginning to wonder when she'd calm down so that they could go back to the flat. He wanted to finish his experiment on the effects of soft metals on amputated rat-tails. Though he would put her at about eight on the 'Scarlet temper scale' when he dragged her out of the flat, it surely couldn't be much longer before she started getting rational again.

Sure enough she spun around and faced him.

"He's _such_ an old fuddy-duddy!"

Sherlock smiled at the expression.

"Don't smile like that, Sherlock!" she yelled.

He stopped smiling and assumed a concerned expression.

"Why does he have to go poking his nose in, over and over again? It's got absolutely nothing to do with him and he won't stop going on about it all the time! It's _my_ business, it's _my _life, and he keeps acting like it's the most important thing in the whole entire world!"

Once again, he tried to resist smiling and the youthful expression.

"Is it not important?" he asked her.

"_Of course_ it's important," she shouted. "That's not the point!"

"OK, what is the point then?"

"The point is... the point is... the point is that it's _my_ bloody UCAS form, it's _my_ choice about where I spend _my_ time at university, and he should just shut up about it!"

"I don't think he wants to make the choice for you Scarlet..."

"Then why won't he shut up about it? It's all the time! Every time I walk through the door I'm interrogated about whether I've filled in the sodding form! I have weeks and weeks left to get it in and he won't stop going on about it."

"Actually, John hasn't mentioned the UCAS form for the past four days since the previous row you had on this subject."

Scarlet stared at him. "Sherlock, stop remembering stuff like that. It's really annoying."

"More or less annoying than offering to help you complete your UCAS form?"

There was the merest hint of a smile. "I just... I don't know. I just don't think I'm ready to complete it yet."

"Why not?"

She looked at him and shrugged.

"It's just a form, Scarlet," he continued. "You fill it in with your name and your address, you say why the University would be stupid not to give you a place, then you send it off."

"I also have to tell them where I want to go to University."

"So?"

"So maybe I don't know where I want to go to university, Sherlock."

"Oh! Well, you want to go to Central Saint Martin's to study fine art. Does that help?"

She sighed. "Maybe I'm not sure about that any more."

"Scarlet, you've talked of little else for the past two years. You've been there to meet the professors, your art teacher's spoken to them about you, you've shown them your work, they raved about it... all you have to do is to put it on the form."

"Maybe."

Sherlock frowned. "What's changed?"

"I don't know. I'm just not as sure as I was."

They stood in silence for a while. Scarlet scuffed the toe of her shoe on the path for a while. Once again, Sherlock wondered how on Earth this child was possibly old enough to be thinking of University.

"Are you ready to go back to the flat yet? Because you looked like you were about to beat John with the fire poker before, and I don't want you to just pick up where you left off."

Scarlet sighed and shrugged.

Sherlock looked about for a moment. Their walk had taken them up to the Cow and Coffee Bean cafe.

"OK, why don't we sit down and have a cup of coffee, and see if we can work out what has changed with regards to Central Saint Martin's."

She gave a hollow sounding laugh. "I don't know whether it's even just the school, Sherlock. I'm beginning to wonder whether I even want to do fine art, or whether I'd be better off doing something more practical like architecture or 3D design."

He smiled. "Then we're definitely going to need coffee. Come on."

She started to follow him, then pulled him to a stop. "Not there," she said, looking at the cafe.

"Why, what's wrong with their coffee?"

"Nothing, it's lovely, it's just... Sherlock, you know when someone serves you in a shop all the time, so you try to be friendly and say hello and comment on the weather and that kind of thing... and then for some reason the whole thing gets a bit... creepy and oppressive?"

"No; I don't try to be friendly to people."

"Oh. Well, anyway, there's a bloke who works in there and he seems to have latched on to me a bit."

Sherlock frowned. "Someone's bothering you?"

"No, well, not really. He's easily avoided. I sometimes still see him around the park when I'm walking home and that's annoying, but I don't go in there any more if I can help it."

"Hm, well maybe I should pop in and have a chat with your oppressor."

"No, Sherlock! Just leave it. He's probably just a lonely old man!"

It was too late, Sherlock had walked briskly into the cafe and Scarlet had no choice but to follow him.

"He's not even here," she told him. "Oh, wait, that's him by the milk steamer."

She turned round to look at Sherlock and found that he had frozen in horror.

"Sherlock? What is it?"

She turned back to the waiter and noticed he was staring at Sherlock too, with a faint smile on his face. He gave Scarlet a little wave. Sherlock suddenly grabbed her round the wrist and pulled her from the cafe. He charged towards the road that runs from North to South through the park.

"Sherlock? What is it? Let go of me, Sherlock, you're hurting me!"

Sherlock didn't appear to hear her. "We need a taxi," he said, "where's a taxi? There's a taxi now, Taxi!" He flagged it down and pulled Scarlet in after him.

"Where are we going, Sherlock? We don't need a cab to take us home!"

"We're not going home," he said, shortly. He pulled out his phone and dialled quickly, and became frustrated when he didn't get an answer. He yelled at a voice-mail box. "Mycroft! Mycroft I'm coming to see you now. I've found James Moriarty and he's after Scarlet!"

He hung up and stared through the window with his fingers over his lips. Scarlet couldn't' get anything more out of him.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Scarlet followed Sherlock through a maze of corridors in a vaguely familiar building. Sherlock was about to push through an unassuming door at the end of a corridor when Anthea put herself in front of him.

"You can't go in there," she said to him.

"I need to see him," Sherlock told her and reached for the door-handle.

"You can wait in my office. The Prime Minister is in there at the moment."

Sherlock looked at her. "This is important," he said.

"Yes, and I'm sure what the Prime Minister wants is important too. You can wait in my office."

They followed her into an adjacent room and she immediately put her headphones on and started typing. Sherlock sat down and Scarlet sat next to him.

"Sherlock, what's going on?" Scarlet asked. "Who was that man?"

He sighed and looked at her. "That man was an old, old enemy."

"You have lots of old enemies. Why was that one special?"

He looked away and shook his head slightly, trying to work out how to explain. "Scarlet, I need you to trust me when I say that that man is the most dangerous man you'll ever meet."

She sniggered, "That's what you said about Mycroft."

He looked at her sharply and the smile died on her lips.

"This isn't a joke, Scarlet."

They were interrupted by Mycroft and the Prime Minister entering the room. Sherlock stood up and pulled Scarlet to her feet too.

"Anthea, could you ask Peter's driver to meet him at the rear entrance, please?" Mycroft asked her.

"Thank you once again, Mister Holmes," the Prime Minister said.

"No trouble at all, Prime Minister, it's the least I could do."

The Prime Minister noticed Sherlock. "Oh, Sherlock! Good to see you again!" He shook hands with him and smiled. Sherlock didn't return the smile and The Prime Minister seemed somewhat taken aback by the fierce look on his face.

Scarlet felt ignored and she started kicking her shoe.

The Prime Minister turned away. "Until next time, Mister Holmes."

"Indeed," Mycroft said. He watched him leave and then turned round to Sherlock and Scarlet. "Right, you'd better come into my office." They followed him in. "Can I get you anything? Would you like some water, Scarlet?"

"No thank you, I'm fine. I'd like to know what the Hell's going on though."

"I've sent a car for John." Mycroft told Sherlock. "Should we wait until he joins us?"

"Mycroft, Moriarty's in the Cow and Coffee Bean cafe in Regent's park. I don't know how long he's been there but he's befriended Scarlet. He knows who she is, I don't know what he's planning but I want her miles away from here."

"Wait a minute..." Scarlet started.

"The Cow and Coffee Bean? I'll send someone there immediately. As for what should be done with Scarlet, well we ought to wait for John to make that decision, don't you think?"

"Hello!" Scarlet cut in, "It's not just up to Dad!"

"Be quiet, Scarlet!" Sherlock snapped.

She gasped and stepped away from him. She sat down in one of the guest chairs in the office. Sherlock ran his hands through his hair in frustration. He turned round to look at her.

"Scarlet," he said to her, "I need you to understand, this man... he will hurt you. He will destroy you and he'll do it slowly, piece by piece, and the only reason he'll do it is because he knows it will hurt me. There is nothing I wouldn't do to protect you from him."

She looked at him for a while. "What did he do?"

Sherlock rubbed his face. "His name is James Moriarty. Twenty years ago he was the head of an international crime network. It's difficult to explain what he did because very little of it could ever be traced back to him. We've found, Mycroft and I have found, some evidence and some links but he was careful, and he was clever, Scarlet. You need to understand though; there was nothing he wouldn't do if he had the incentive. Human life has no sanctity for him. He committed his first murder when he was just fourteen years old. He is, to be frank, the perfect criminal. He is desperately clever, and he has no emotions, not moral compass causing him to make mistakes. It is extremely important that you don't underestimate him."

"So why does he hate you so much?"

"Because I got in his way. And then I didn't die, and neither did your Dad and that failure has been burning away in him for twenty years. Imagine his delight when a fresh faced and innocent Scarlet Watson happened across his path. Imagine what sorts of interesting images that set off in his cruel little mind."

"OK. So I need to be careful."

"You need to be somewhere else."

Scarlet started to shake her head, but before she could speak they were interrupted by John, bursting into the room.

"Sherlock, what the Hell's going on? I have term-papers to mark!"

"They can wait. Moriarty; he's been working in the Cow and Coffee Bean for..." he turned back to Scarlet, "when did you first see him there?"

"I'm not sure. It's certainly been a while. I remember he was there when we had that heat-wave. The early one, in July."

"So at least six months." Sherlock sat down in the chair at Mycroft's desk. "What's he playing at? Six months and he hadn't made a move?"

"Maybe he's not intending to." John suggested.

Sherlock shook his head, scornfully. "You think he might be reformed? Come on John, this is Moriarty we're talking about."

"No, well, maybe not reformed, but maybe he's not that interested in Scarlet after all. Maybe he's just interested in learning about you through her?"

"No."

"No what."

"Just no. Shut up. I'm thinking."

John and Scarlet watched him. Mycroft picked up his phone and had a quiet conversation, clearly instructing someone to search the cafe.

Scarlet chewed on her lip. "Are you going to be much longer? Just I've got things to do."

"Scarlet!" Sherlock snapped.

"_Sherlock_!" John snapped back.

"Mycroft, can Scarlet stay with you for a while?" Sherlock asked. "At least until we've found him again?"

"Of course, she's more than welcome at any time." Mycroft answered.

"No!" Scarlet said, "I'm not going to do that."

"You can skip school for a while." Sherlock told her.

"Why would I do that? Sherlock, what would be the point of imprisoning me somewhere? And how long are you suggesting I stay locked up?"

"Until we find him."

"And how long will that take? You haven't heard anything about him for twenty years! What if it's another twenty? Besides, we're going to see The Nutcracker on Saturday and I'm not going to miss it!"

"Don't be silly, you can't possibly go."

"Sherlock!"

"We can go next year."

"Yes, and we can go this year too! Sherlock, I've been looking forward to it! You promised!"

"Sherlock, she's right you know," John put in, "we can't keep her hidden indefinitely. We can't lock her in her room, remember."

"John!" Sherlock pleaded, "I don't think you're taking this seriously enough! Have you forgotten him? Have you forgotten what he's like?"

"No, I haven't, I remember, Sherlock. But it was twenty years ago. More than that now. He's been nowhere, he's done nothing, he doesn't have a network that either you or Mycroft can find, and if you two can't, then who can? I know he's a threat, and I don't want him getting close to Scarlet, but I'm not prepared to stop her living her life on account of it! How long are we supposed to do that for? The next month? The next year? Until her youth has entirely gone? I am worried too, of course I am! The thought that he's been watching her sickens me, but now we know we'll have to find a way of being careful without shutting Scarlet away from the world."

Sherlock listened to this closely. They all seemed to hold their breaths while he thought about it, then eventually, he slowly nodded.

"OK. All right. That's what we'll do. We'll keep her safe that way."

"OK." John agreed. "But for now, can we please take her home?"

Sherlock thought for a moment. "You can take her home. I'll stay here and work some things out with Mycroft. I should call Lestrade too; they never closed the file on Moriarty. He'll be interested."

"Lestrade's retired, Sherlock." John reminded him.

"Damn. Fine, I'll call that imbecile, Dimmock, then. We'll work out what to do. You take Scarlet home if that's what you feel you need to do, but pull all the curtains, stay away from the windows, don't open the doors or any letters or packages that arrive, oh and tell Mrs Hudson the same."

"Sherlock..."

"You need to put your gun back together. Keep it with you at all times."

"Sherlock..."

"If you don't, John, I will. Just look after her until I get home. I won't be more than a few hours."

John resisted rolling his eyes. He headed out and held the door for Scarlet.

Anthea appeared in front of them. "Mycroft says I'm to send you both home." She smiled.

John and Scarlet followed her out to a car. There was a second man along with the usual driver, and John supposed he was a bodyguard as he ushered them into the car and closed the door after them. Suddenly John felt the whole thing was quite surreal.

"Oh Lord, Scarlet, what are our lives like, heh?" he asked her.

"They're not boring." She pointed out.

"No, that's true. With Sherlock Holmes around, you can never be bored."

"Dad, what did Moriarty do that's shaken him up so much? I've never seen him like this."

"No. Well, Moriarty was... For about three days, Moriarty was everything in Sherlock's life. He killed twelve people with a bomb, he shot dead an old lady, he had several other people killed, he kidnapped a little boy and strapped semtex to his chest and he absolutely would have killed him if Sherlock hadn't played the game, and then he kidnapped me."

Scarlet looked at him, surprised.

John smiled in response. "Don't think I'm immune from that sort of thing, Scarlet."

"I don't."

"Good. Because anyone can be kidnapped, and if Sherlock's right, Moriarty's next target is you. Sherlock isn't messing around when he says Moriarty is dangerous. He killed several of Mycroft's people to get to me, then he covered me in explosives and sent me in to destroy Sherlock."

"Oh." She said softly. "I just... OK."

"Sherlock's right to suggest we shouldn't underestimate him. His methods of protecting you might be a little unworkable, but he's right."

"We'll be careful," Scarlet agreed. She reached over and took her father's hand. "Don't worry, Dad; we'll be careful."

John smiled at her. "Yes we will."

Scarlet stared out of the window for a while. "I'm still going to see the Nutcracker on Saturday though. Buggered if I'm going to let him ruin my entire Christmas."

"That's the spirit, Scarlet. You should probably get on with your UCAS form too. You don't want to put your whole life on hold."

She rolled her eyes.

oOo

Sherlock came home several hours later. He outlined to Scarlet and John the measures that he and Mycroft had been able to put into place. The house at Baker Street would be constantly guarded, as would Scarlet herself at every point she was not in the house. Sherlock had negotiated that their guards would remain outside the house and outside her college as long as Scarlet was prepared to check in with them and Sherlock regularly.

She recognised the effort's he had made on her behalf to allow her some degree of privacy, and thanked him politely before going upstairs to her room.

Sherlock and John stared at the fire for a while.

"John, do you ever think about that night?"

"That night at the pool? From time to time. Not so much in recent years though. It seems like another lifetime. I've been thinking about it today though."

"He wanted me to think you were him, you know. Making you enter on your own like that."

"Did it work?"

"Not for a second. No."

"Really?"

"No. There was no way on Earth you were Moriarty; nothing about you is at all like anything about him."

"Good."

"Mind if I play my violin for a bit? I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight."

"Fine."

Sherlock reached for the case and spent some time preparing his violin. John watched him. He knew the routine by heart now, and he knew the preparation was as ritualistic and as important as the playing.

The violin was held and gently tuned, Sherlock concentrating on each note, making tiny adjustments. He tuned it entirely by ear.

"Sherlock…" John said, when he'd finished.

"Mm?" Sherlock put the violin down and started with the bow, tightening the hairs before picking up his rosin and moving the bow over it in long, graceful sweeps.

"Thank you, for sorting out all of this help for Scarlet. I don't mean to sound as if I don't care or that I'm not terrified too, but… part of me doesn't want her to know that. Part of me wants her to know as little as possible about Moriarty."

"Did you give her any details?"

"Yes. I told her about some of the game he played. I told her about me being kidnapped."

Sherlock stopped what he was doing for a moment. "Was she… upset by that?"

"I don't know. She was surprised I think. But it's Scarlet. I think it's hard for her to imagine anything particularly bad happening. I'm here now, as are you; as far as she's concerned, that's all that matters. Maybe I've sheltered her too much."

"Maybe."

John smiled. "Actually, Sherlock, this is one of those times when I want you to back me up and tell me what a fantastic parent I am."

Sherlock smiled too. "You know that I think that. Scarlet is remarkable, brilliant, lovely… she wouldn't be any of those things if it wasn't for you."

"And you."

"I'm not looking for reassurance, John. I do worry about her though. Sometimes she seems completely defenceless against unkind or cruel people. It's so outside of her nature that it always seems to take her by surprise when people are anything other than pleasant. I wonder if this is one of those times when we need to make her frightened. She needs to know how frightened we were."

"Mm. It's hard though. And she's seen how frightened you are now. It didn't help. She thinks you're being melodramatic."

"She's naïve."

Sherlock finished his preparation and started to play a low soothing movement based on a Bach concerto.

"The problem is; I'm not sure I'd want her any other way." John said, mostly to himself.

oOo

Moriarty was not to be found at the cafe. The address he'd given on his job application was for a house that had been occupied by an elderly couple for thirty years and they'd never heard of James Moriarty, or his alias, Jim Cooke. They'd been shown a picture of Moriarty and claimed they'd never seen him. Surveillance was put on their house nonetheless, but there was no sign.

Scarlet was tailed by a number of security guards as she walked to and from college. She was not allowed to go out with her friends, a restriction she only suffered because Sherlock had compromised over The Nutcracker.

Saturday dawned and despite having had to turn down a day of Christmas shopping with her friends, Scarlet seemed on good form. She danced on tiptoe into the kitchen where John was washing up after dinner.

"Marvellous, Scarlet," John said to her, laughing. "Maybe we don't need to go tonight; you could just perform the whole thing here in the flat."

"I'm going tonight."

"Yes, yes you are."

"Is Sherlock coming?"

"He hasn't said he isn't."

"He's angry with me isn't he?"

"No he's not, Scarlet. He's terrified. He finds it difficult to be pleasant when he's terrified."

"He must be terrified a lot then."

"Scarlet, be patient with him. And I keep telling you, he's not wrong."

"It's ridiculous though. I'm flanked by bodyguards every time I walk home. It's like I'm supposed to be someone important, when really I don't matter at all."

"I think Sherlock sees it differently."

Sherlock walked into the kitchen.

"Right then, are we all ready then?" he asked.

Scarlet smiled hopefully at him. "Are you coming too?"

"Of course. I wouldn't miss it."

She walked across and hugged him. "Thank you, Sherlock."

He held on to her slightly longer than was necessary. "I'm sorry about all of this, Scarlet."

"Hardly your fault," she told him lightly before pulling away and running to get her shoes.

oOo

The curtain came down at the end of the first half. Scarlet sat back in her chair and sighed happily.

"They're so beautiful," she said to John. "So, so beautiful. Why didn't you make me do ballet?"

"I did," he answered, "you went for an hour every Saturday for two years. You know you did. Unfortunately, Scarlet, you were about as graceful and poised as a duck."

She laughed. "Thanks, Dad. You really know how to cheer a girl up!"

"You can't be talented at everything," he pointed out. "It works well in the family. You've got your art which you're good at and it makes you happy, Sherlock's got all those ridiculous brains, and I've got... charm, sophistication, wit..."

Scarlet laughed again. "Can I have some ice-cream?"

John lent down and grappled under his chair for his chair for his coat and wallet, groaning as he did so. "My leg's stiff. They spent millions on restoring this place and they still couldn't be bothered with comfortable chairs."

"Yes right, Dad, it's the chairs and not your age and your bad leg. I'll go and get them, I'll only be a minute." She glanced across at where Sherlock was sitting. "Should we wake him?"

John glanced over too. "No, let him sleep. He's barely slept at all this week. I'm amazed he managed a whole twenty minutes."

"He's such a worry-wart," Scarlet said, dismissively, and then she turned and skipped up the steps to the corridor.

Sherlock did have to wake a minute later as a family pushed past him to the stairway.

He yawned and looked at John. "Is it over yet?" he asked.

"No, just the first half."

"Where's Scarlet?" he asked quickly.

"Oh she's just gone for ice-cream. She'll be back in a second."

"Why didn't you go? I'll go and find her." Sherlock said, and he pushed past John into the crowd.

John sat back to wait for them.

Sherlock was back three minutes later, alone.

"She's not in the queue," he told John. "I've checked the ushers at either side, she's not there, John."

"Well, she's probably in the loo. Sherlock, calm down, just try and relax a bit."

"John; she's not there! She's gone."

John sighed. "Fine, I'll come and help you look for her." He got up and limped up the stairs.

They separated and each made their way along the curved corridor, calling Scarlet's name all the way along. They turned and swept back towards the middle, checking all of the ladies toilets along the way. There was no sign of Scarlet. When they met at the middle the bell rang for people to find their seats again. They stood still and stared at each other as people pushed past them back into the auditorium.

"I'm going to check back at the seats," John said.

Sherlock could hear the stress just beginning to tell in his voice. He nodded and watched John head back in, knowing that she wouldn't be there.

She wasn't. John stared at the three empty seats. He turned round to an usher.

"Can you help me? My daughter's gone missing; she went for ice-cream and didn't come back."

The usher, looking little more than a child herself, nodded with wide eyes. "Of course; what's your daughter's name?"

"Scarlet."

"And how old is she? What's she wearing."

"She's seventeen, she's wearing... er... jeans and a black top and a red jumper."

"She's seven?"

"No, seventeen."

He noticed the look on her face. "Look, forget it." He rushed back to where Sherlock was.

"She's not there. Sherlock, where could she be?"

They both knew the answer to the question. They stood and stared as the bell rang again for the second half, and a minute later they were stood alone in the corridor, staring blankly at each other.


	3. Chapter 3

**Things I have learned so far from this fanfic.**

**One - Don't say you won't use ANs if you're likely to discover that's the only way you have to communicate with some people. Thank you so, so much for the reviews, all of you. I'm so pleased that this one is going down well. Could someone help me with the Anonymous review yesterday? I haven't seen Life on Mars since it was first aired and have no recollection of the mentioned sign. I don't mind if it's praise or hatred or something in between, but it would be nice to know.**

**Two - Don't work into the evening when you're tired and then use hot-keys to save your work. I hit D – Delete instead of S – Save and in my tiredness I didn't notice this happening, even when it prompted me to hit 'enter'. I panicked for a full half hour when I couldn't fine chapter 3 and the computer hadn't made its own back up copy. I found it in the trash and went to bed shaken but wiser.**

Chapter 3

They stood there for a moment in the corridor.

"Let's try the loos again," John said. "I'll go this way, you go down there. I'll meet you back here."

He set off before Sherlock could protest. Sherlock went in the other direction knowing full well that this would be futile.

He got to the end of the corridor, and then he turned and set off back to the middle. John was already there when he got back, looking ashen.

"Where is she?" he asked again.

Sherlock didn't know how to answer.

Suddenly John laughed. "This is ridiculous, Sherlock! She always turns up. Always! Maybe... maybe she got bored and went home."

As he finished talking he gulped suddenly, as if wanting to bite back the stupidity of that statement. He turned away, wishing Sherlock wasn't watching him. He found he had no emotion ready for this event. The rising panic felt the same that it always had, every other time just before Scarlet reappeared, or called home, or laughed, or her fever sank. He could feel it stabbing at him now, wanting to break in. He was so used to the feeling of relief that always followed these moments that he found he had no idea what to feel when that relief didn't come.

He turned back to Sherlock, who hadn't moved.

"What do we do now?" he asked him.

For a moment Sherlock looked uncertain, and then he blinked. "We need to call Mycroft. We need to know where his men are. They should be here; they should be in this corridor. We need to call Lestrade. No, we need to call Dimmock. We need to... we should alert someone at the theatre too. Come on."

He pulled John towards the central staircase. Half way down the first flight, John stopped.

"I should go and check the seats again."

"She isn't there."

"She might be!" He ran back up the stairs.

Sherlock waited for a moment, and then continued down to the foyer. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and scrolled down to Mycroft's number. He stared for a moment, not wanting to make the call. Instead he typed out the words 'she's gone' into a text message and stared at it for a while. He wondered where John had got to, and whether he'd turn up in a moment with Scarlet in tow. He counted to ten. He hit 'send'.

Within a few seconds, his phone rang.

"How?" Mycroft asked, "Where are you?"

"We're at the Royal Opera House. She went to get ice-cream."

"Alone?"

"God, Mycroft, just don't!"

"Is John with you?"

"He's checking the seats again. Mycroft, where are your men?"

"I'm checking now."

"Mycroft... Mycroft, she's gone!" Sherlock hissed into the phone.

"I'll be with you in twenty minutes. Don't move, Sherlock, stay where you are. I'll be with you shortly."

Sherlock hung up. He looked up and could see John following an usher down the stairs. He had their coats over his arms and was staring wildly around him. He was avoiding looking at Sherlock.

"Mister Holmes?" the usher said, "I've put a call out to the duty manager. She'll be along with you shortly. Would you like to come along to the office?"

"I've called... someone, they'll be here soon. I'd rather wait here."

"I'll ask her to come and see you here then." The usher stood away from them and looked uselessly towards a doorway.

"John?" Sherlock said.

John looked at him and shrugged, bewildered.

They stood together, jumping at shadows until Mycroft appeared. He had Lestrade with him. Sherlock stormed across.

"Where are your men?"

Mycroft looked at him for a moment before answering. "They were found in Cubitts Yard."

"What were they doing there?" Sherlock asked. "They should have been here, in the corridor outside the dress..." As he spoke he realised what Mycroft meant.

Lestrade was already talking to the manager about CCTV videos. He turned and walked back to where John was, still holding the coats, still looking bewildered.

"How long as she been missing now?" He asked him.

John jumped. "Missing?"

Lestrade looked across at Sherlock. "She left us in the interval," he said, heavily. He looked at his watch. "Thirty-five, forty minutes."

"Right." Lestrade pulled his phone out and started making phone calls about roadblocks and perimeters and checking other video cameras.

"Mycroft," he said, "I might need your help."

"Of course." Mycroft went over to him.

John and Sherlock stared at each other.

"Um, we should... we should try to find her." John said.

"We will."

"Should I call her friends?" John asked, holding out his phone.

"No."

Mycroft and Lestrade finished talking and came back to them.

"We should head back to your flat." Lestrade told them. "I've called Dimmock, he's going to meet us there."

"No, we can't leave." John answered. "I can't go... I can't go home without Scarlet."

"John..." Sherlock said.

"No, no. You go on, I'll wait here in case she comes back. You should go back to the flat."

Sherlock walked up to him. He put his hand out to touch John's arm, but stopped just before he reached him. "John... you have to come with us," he said quietly.

"I can't leave her here!" John whispered back.

"John, she's not here any more."

John turned and looked suddenly at the stairs as if he expected to see Scarlet coming down to them. He turned back to Sherlock.

"OK."

oOo

Scarlet woke up slowly. She was confused, and wasn't entirely sure when she'd gone to sleep. The first thing she noticed was that her neck was stiff. The second thing was that she was nauseous, and her stomach felt bloated and distended. The third thing was it was very cold where she was. It was dark too, the only light coming from a torch, resting on a desk next to her bed.

The nauseous feeling was growing urgent so she pulled herself off the bed she'd been laying on. She realised the stiffness in her neck was due to the lack of pillows on the bed. There was no bedding at all, it was just a stained mattress on an old metal frame, but she ignored that for now.

She pulled herself towards the door and pulled at the door handle. It was locked, but there was no keyhole. She realised it must be bolted on the outside. The panic made her stomach turn and she turned desperately back to the room and shone the torch around, and she saw a bucket lined with a carrier bag looking incongruously bright and new in this cold, dark room.

She grabbed it and threw up for a few minutes.

When it was over, she put the bucket down and looked around her. Everything she saw overwhelmed her so she sat back down on the bed, shivering. She lay back down, curled into a ball and cried.

She dozed and cried on and off for around an hour, and when she woke up properly she found her head was clearer.

She turned stared into the darkness and tried to work out what had happened.

Moriarty had got her; that much was obvious. She shivered, remembering what John had told her about him, and tried very hard to keep the panic at arm's length. She thought about Sherlock and wondered what he would do in this situation.

She decided he would try to escape. That would be the most sensible course of action. It also seemed beyond her ability for the moment.

She then thought he would at least work out where he was. She shut her eyes and tried to listen for sounds outside. There were none. There were none from inside the building either. She didn't know whether there was anyone else here with her or whether she'd just been left.

She went to the door and banged on it. "Hello! Is there anyone out there? I'm awake!"

There was no answer. There were no footsteps. Nothing.

She felt the panic rising again and took a few deep breaths as she'd seen her father do from time to time.

She felt slightly annoyed with herself for vomiting. The smell in the room was sour and unpleasant, mixing with the smell of dust and damp. She also had a foul taste in her mouth and she knew she'd lost fluids that would need replacing. She didn't know whether Moriarty was planning on feeding her.

There was a small, double glazed window next to the bed with a desk in front of it so she went to have a look to see outside. There was nothing to see, no lights at all, anywhere in the view. The window might have well have had black paper taped over it. She reasoned it must be fairly unusual to have a window that looked out onto no lights at all in London.

She had no idea what to do with that information.

She wondered if she was in London at all any more.

She looked at the rest of the room. It was about eight feet long by six feet wide. The wallpaper was beige with an odd geometric pattern such as was fashionable in the early eighties. It was old and at points it was peeling away from the walls. In the corner opposite her, at the top of the wall, there was a patch of black mould. The carpet was brown, threadbare and dusty looking. The desk was an old fashioned, wooden school-desk with three drawers. She looked in each of them but they were empty. The bed frame was metal and rusted and the blue striped mattress had several alarming looking stains.

There was an ancient looking oil-filled radiator between the desk and the window but it was old and rusted and cold.

She was still fully dressed in everything she had been wearing at the theatre. She was glad she hadn't taken her jumper off and she wished she still had her coat. Her hair was down, which surprised her. Though it was long, she rarely left it free. It made her feel uncomfortable and annoyed. She instinctively fished in her pockets for a hair-band, but there was nothing there. Her phone and her oyster card were also missing.

Her sapphire ring had been taken off her finger, and as soon as she noticed the loss she started crying again. She stopped herself as soon as she could, remembering that she couldn't afford to lose more fluid.

She tried to calm herself again and she sat down on the bed to think. She wished she was a little bit better at thinking. She thought again of Sherlock. She decided to start small, and to take things one thought at a time.

She was feeling more or less fine now. She knew she was panicking slightly but she decided that was justified. Her upper right arm was aching slightly. Running her hand over it, she could feel a scratch and she assumed she must have been injected there with something. Other than that, she didn't seem to be physically injured in any way, and she made herself see that as a positive.

She thought back. She could remember going into the corridor at the theatre and being dismayed at the length of the queue for ice-creams. She'd smiled at an old lady who'd smiled back. She'd been pulled, but assumed it was just jostling from the crowd. She'd felt a sharp pain in her arm... and then nothing. He must have been waiting there for an opportunity. She felt guilty that she'd given him that opportunity despite all of Sherlock's warnings and efforts to keep her safe.

She tried to focus herself on the immediate again, and found she was getting annoyed with her hair falling in front of her face.

She looked down at her feet and noticed that she still had her shoes on. She still had her belt on too. She decided that both of these things might be useful in some way, if she could only work out how.

In the first instance, she took off her shoes, pulled the shoelace out of one of them and used it to tie her hair back and out of her face.

When she'd done so, it felt like a minor triumph. She thought again of Sherlock and wondered whether he'd approve of the thought; 'if I can sort my hair, I can sort anything.' She doubted it, but she was pleased that the thought made her smile briefly. It made her feel she was slightly in control.

She sat on the bed like a Buddha, and having little else to do, she started reciting the poems she'd learned with her Dad, years before.

She was part way through Kubla Khan when she heard footsteps coming towards the room. She heard a bolt being pulled back from the door.

The door opened and the old man from the cafe looked in at her.

"Hello Scarlet," he said.

He smiled.

oOo

The flat felt full and busy and far too warm. Sherlock was in the kitchen, leaning on Mycroft's chair as they watched the CCTV footage from the Royal Opera House. A number of their cameras seemed to be out of action. Dimmock was with them too, with his own laptop, looking at footage from Cubitts Yard and the surrounding streets.

Sherlock was trying hard to concentrate on what he was seeing, but his eyes kept flickering over to John who was sat on the sofa, talking with Lestrade and a family support officer who had been introduced as Sergeant Lucy Gregson. She looked too young for the job, and seemed nervous. Sherlock had told her she wasn't needed, but Lestrade had pulled him away, and John seemed to be comfortable with talking to her.

Mike Stanfield was here too. Sherlock frowned, wondering why he was here and when he'd been called and by whom. He seemed to have no useful function in the room right now and Sherlock wanted him to leave.

Again, John seemed comfortable talking to him, so Sherlock kept his counsel.

Mrs Hudson was there too, bustling around, trying to make everyone sufficient tea. She regularly forgot what she was doing and would stop half way through a room and look confused and upset.

Sherlock desperately wanted to shout at her to go away too, but he restrained himself. Scarlet loved Mrs Hudson and she'd never forgive him if he was to upset her unreasonably.

The thought of Scarlet made him catch his breath for a second.

"Are you all right?" Mycroft asked him.

"What? Yes. Of course I am. It's not my daughter who's gone missing."

Mycroft looked as if he wanted to dispute this, but he didn't. "We'll find her, Sherlock. I promise," he said. He gave him what he hoped was an encouraging smile, and gently put his hand over Sherlock's.

Sherlock instantly pulled away and stormed a few paces into the living room. He pulled at his hair. He slowly became conscious that John was looking at him.

"Sorry," he muttered in his direction, and went to stare out of the window.

Sergeant Gregson turned back to John. "So to be clear, Scarlet had had no rows with anyone that you are aware of this week, other than the one with you over the application form."

"Yes that's right. But we were over that row."

"I understand. And you're sure there was no issue with her school-friends? Or her boyfriend?"

"She doesn't have a boyfriend."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"And her other friends, is it possible she received a text while she was at the theatre?"

"I don't…" John started to falter.

"Is this all strictly necessary?" Sherlock suddenly shouted. "We know what happened. Moriarty took her! All of these questions are completely redundant and stupid! Why are you here asking ridiculous questions when you should be out there, actually looking for her!"

Gregson seemed completely cowed and didn't answer.

"Sherlock," Lestrade said to him, calmly, "it's very important that we have all the details, that we have as clear a picture as possible about what happened today. You know that it is, please, try to stay calm right now while we do this."

"Calm! You're telling me to be calm!" He stopped suddenly, again realising that everyone was staring at him. Mycroft had risen, and looked as though he wanted to pull Sherlock into a hug. Sherlock shook himself.

"Sorry," he muttered again.

Gregson turned back to John. "Those photos you said you had…"

"I'll get them now." He stepped around Mrs Hudson who looked up and noticed him there.

"Oh John…" she said, starting to cry again.

"It's all going to be fine, Mrs Hudson," John told her.

"But Scarlet!"

"Mrs Hudson," Mike said to her, standing up, "we're all doing everything we can to get her back, but right now I think John just needs to finish up with the police here. Shall we go downstairs to wait while he does that?" He gently led her from the room.

John was left staring into space and swaying slightly.

"You were getting photographs." Sherlock reminded him.

"Oh yes." He got to the bookshelves and stared at the many photographs of Scarlet that had been put there. They were quite haphazard, only a few of them were framed, some were stuck to shelves with blu-tack and others were leaning against the books.

He looked at Sherlock. "Which would be the best one to use?"

Sherlock wondered at the ludicrous nature of the question, but turned to help him look. The two of them stood there staring at pictures of Scarlet for a moment, wanting to hand them all over, and to give them none at all. John turned went back to the sofa empty-handed and sat down again with his head in his hands.

"Wait, I took a photo on my phone at the theatre," Sherlock suddenly remembered. "I'll text it to you now."

"If you have three or four of her in different situations, that would be helpful." Sergeant Gregson told him.

He nodded and started scrolling through his photos.

His phone rang and he nearly dropped it in surprise. It was an unknown number, but he answered anyway.

"Hello?"

"Sherlock?"

"Scarlet? Scarlet, where are you?"

John stood up and was next to him in a second. Sherlock switched to speaker.

"Hello, Sherlock... it's been a while... hasn't it?"

"Scarlet?"

"I thought... it was time... for round two."

Sherlock gasped. Everyone in the room was now standing and staring at the phone.

"Scarlet, listen to me," Sherlock said desperately, "do exactly what he tells you, exactly. Don't try to give me clues; don't describe anything, he'll know. Do exactly what he says. Do you understand?"

There was a pause.

"She's not allowed... to talk to you... Talk to me."

"I'll swap. I'll swap, you tell me where to come, you can do what you want to me, give her back."

"No deal."

Sherlock swallowed. "What do you want me to do?"

"We'll speak soon." The line went dead.

Sherlock spun round to look at John. He'd been backing off slowly during the conversation and now he was stood in the corner of the room, pale, and barely breathing.

"John..." he said, striding towards him.

"No," John said, his voice barely above a whisper and backing away from him. "Sherlock, this is your fault."

He turned and fled from the room.


	4. Chapter 4

**I'm really bored at work, so you're getting today's instalment very, very early. Please review, just so I have tiny buzzes of excitement as the emails come in.**

**Anonymous, thanks for coming back to me! That makes perfect sense. Thank you too for your research on this, Aquamarine565 - you got a lot further with Google than me and MrPip managed! I was all set to watch that episode then Anonymous returned and saved the day.**

**When I lost Chapter 3, I mailed Katkin in a panic, and she kindly re-wrote it for me. This is her version: "They found Scarlet outside the theatre having a crafty ** which she'd bought with John's icecream money. They watched Act 2 and then went home to live happily ever after." I'm not entirely sure what the stars stand for here, but I'm guessing 'splif'. I think it's a good ending. Makes mine seem a little wordy.  
**

**Once again, thanks for the reviews, and I'm blown away, very, very happy and going to bed with a huge smile each night when I reflect on how cruel I'm being by making you all wait a day between each chapter. MrPip's read the ending. His view; 'yeah, it's OK.' So with that tantalising review, let's move onto the next chapter.  
**

Chapter 4

Scarlet sat on the bed, refusing to look at Moriarty. He walked over and gently removed the phone and text reader she was holding and headed towards the door.

"Wait!" Scarlet called. "I need some water."

Moriarty smirked. "Didn't your father teach you any manners? That seems strange, he always seemed like such a nice, polite boy."

Scarlet swallowed. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "Please may I have some water?"

"There now, that wasn't hard was it? I'll bring you some later."

"Thank you. Please may I go to the bathroom?"

"Oh no. You have a bucket." He turned and went through the door. She could hear two bolts being slid home.

She breathed a shuddering sigh and tried hard not to cry again, but it was no use. Hearing Sherlock's voice had made her feel warm in this freezing flat and now it was gone again. She tried to recall his exact words to her, but found she couldn't remember his precise phrasing. She curled up on the bed again and cried.

oOo

Sherlock was suddenly aware everyone was watching him. He cleared his throat, but then found he had nothing to say.

Lestrade walked over to him and took his phone. "I'll find those photos," he told him.

"I can do it," Sherlock replied.

"You need to go upstairs."

Sherlock frowned. "Why?"

He got the impression that this was one of those things he shouldn't have said.

"Go on, Sherlock," Lestrade told him softly.

Sherlock nodded, and walked slowly to the door and up the stairs.

He listened at the bathroom door, but couldn't hear anything so he knocked.

"John?"

Very faintly, he heard a muffled sob.

"John, I'm coming in." He tried the door and was relieved John hadn't locked it.

John was sat on the floor against a wall with his knees close to his chest. His face was a mess with tears and he was shivering. Sherlock had a flashback to finding him in the treatment room at Bart's, moments after Mary had died. He struggled to breathe for a moment.

He turned and locked the door, then went to sit down, close to John.

"Sorry," John said to him, through his tears "I know this isn't your fault. It's just... God this is so real. It's so horrific. I can't... sorry."

Sherlock struggled to work out how to answer any of this. He ran certain answers through his head but they all seemed trite, patronising, or pointless. He sat there for a while, staring at the bathtub.

John at least seemed to be taking comfort from his presence and he started calming down. "I should go back downstairs," he said.

"You don't have to. It's getting late; if you want to go to bed you should do that."

John shook his head. "I don't think I can. Mike's offered to give me something so I can sleep, but it seems wrong. That's stupid, isn't it?"

"No. But you should take whatever he's offered you anyway and get some sleep. You won't be any good to Scarlet if you're exhausted."

John suddenly clutched at his chest and struggled with more huge sobs. Sherlock waited until he was calmer.

"OK?"

"Yes. No. I don't want to go back downstairs. I don't want to go to bed either."

Sherlock looked around the bathroom. "I'm not sure how long you'll be comfortable in here."

John snorted, then sobbed again and grabbed Sherlock's wrist. "Sherlock, you have to find her. You _have_ to. I don't think... you _have _to find her."

Sherlock nodded. "I know." He pulled himself up from the floor, and pulled John up after him. "You should go to bed."

He settled John in his room, and ran back downstairs.

"Mike, John mentioned a sleeping pill. Could you sort that out, please?" he said on his way through to the kitchen.

Dimmock, Lestrade and Mycroft were all staring at him.

"Have you found anything?" he asked them.

"Is John OK?" Dimmock asked.

"His daughter has just been kidnapped by a psychopath, you imbecile. Exactly how 'OK' do you think he's likely to be?"

"Sherlock, do you need to go and rest?" Lestrade asked him.

"No, I need to work. Now what have you found?"

"Not a vast amount, but not nothing either." Lestrade answered. "The cameras that weren't working in the Opera House followed a clear route outside, so they were taken out deliberately."

"Obviously."

"We've run into similar problems with the cameras over Covent Garden. All we've got of the abduction is this."

He turned the computer round to Sherlock and hit play on a video. It was quite distant, the camera was directed at a shop, but in the corner of the frame, there was an out of focus movement followed by a vehicle driving away. Sherlock picked up the computer and squinted at it. He played the video twice more. It wasn't _clearly_ Scarlet and it wasn't _clearly_ Moriarty. Sherlock couldn't identify either with certainty. On the other hand, the timing and the position were both right, and he felt inside him that it was her.

He nodded and handed the computer back.

"Anything else?"

"There are a couple of vehicles leaving the scene we'd like to look into." Dimmock told him.

"What about my phone? There was a number identified; anything there."

"Not yet, but we're on it."

"Work faster. Is my phone tapped? Do you have a recording to play back?"

"It's tapped now." Mycroft told him. "We'll record the next call."

"It's a bit late now!"

"Sherlock," Mycroft said, "you need to rest."

"Don't tell me what to do!"

He turned away and stalked into the front room. He knew he was being unnecessarily aggressive but he couldn't seem to get it under control. This frustrated him further. He threw himself down on the sofa and rubbed his face. He tried to concentrate so that he could just think for a while.

Sergeant Gregson was sat on the other side of the sofa, watching him with worried eyes.

"Mister Holmes," she said, "is there anything I can do for you? I understand you're Scarlet's step-father, and I want you to know that the Met are doing all they..." She trailed off as Sherlock turned to her and stared with impassive, grey eyes.

"Get out of my house," he said to her.

She leapt up and scurried into the kitchen where she had a quiet but urgent conversation with Dimmock and Lestrade. The end result of this was that she quietly left.

Sherlock turned around and put his legs up on the sofa, and lay back. He stared at the ceiling.

oOo

Scarlet lay back on the bed. She had taken off her jumper and was using it as a pillow, though it was scarcely adequate for this. It also meant she was colder, so he wasn't sure it was a net gain, but she couldn't be bothered to move to put it back on now.

She looked up as she heard the bolts on the door being pulled back. Moriarty stepped into the room holding a paper cup.

"I've brought water for you."

She slowly got off the bed and took it from him. It was a small paper cup, and it was a little under half full. She finished it in three mouthfuls.

"Is there any more?" she asked him. He raised his eyebrows at her. "Please may I have some more?"

"No. We've only got bottled water here, and this is all I can spare."

She handed the cup back to him and sat down again. Moriarty didn't seem eager to leave. Her eyes flickered to the door, which was still open.

"I don't think so, Scarlet." He said with a smile. "So, what do you imagine your Daddy is doing right now? What about Sherlock? I imagine they're desperately scanning CCTV cameras desperate to find you. Well, Sherlock will be. Not sure about your Dad. I imagine he's just crying somewhere. That seems most likely."

Scarlet flew at him, hitting and scratching wildly. She was uncoordinated and hadn't got her weight in the right places to be effective, but she'd managed to catch hold of one of his ears and she pulled on it hard.

Moriarty yelled in pain, but easily shrugged her off. She tried to dart towards the door but he quickly grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back. He started laughing at her.

"Oh do you really think you'd have anything like the fighting ability to attack me?" He twisted her arm back hard and she yelped. "I don't think nearly enough time's been spent on your education, has it? Darling Daddy and Sherlock Holmes, neither one of them prepared you even remotely to deal with me!"

He grabbed her by her other arm too now and pulled her close to him. "It's delightful having you here, Scarlet! I'm looking forward to having a little fun with you!" He leant in as if to kiss her and she closed her eyes and shuddered. At the last moment, he snapped his teeth together. He then slapped her hard across the face and flung her back onto the bed.

She shivered but didn't try to move again.

She heard the door close and the bolts being slid across the door. It was very dark now, and she realised that he'd taken the torch.

When she was sure he was gone, she rolled over so that she was flat on her back and held onto her wrist, which was beginning to throb. She fought tears, and couldn't stop shivering. She closed her eyes and thought of her Dad. She wondered if she would be able to communicate with him if she just thought hard enough. She'd never believed stories of mind-power before. Every day she'd seen evidence of a truly brilliant mind, and it couldn't move or bend things or communicate without some outward signs.

She tried anyway. "Dad, I need you to find me now."

Her Dad was in Baker Street, drugged and asleep.

oOo

Sherlock didn't move from his position on the sofa, and the other three were all ignoring him, quietly following their own lines of enquiry. At midnight, Mike made his excuses and left. At 4:00, Dimmock took a call informing him that one of the vehicles he'd been looking for had been torched in Windsor Great Park.

Sherlock stood up quickly and reached for his coat. "Thank God. Something practical to do at last."

Lestrade looked at him. "Sherlock, it might be better if you don't come with us," he told him.

"Don't be ridiculous. It's evidence, I need to see it. I can't find her if I don't see evidence before it's been mauled but the Met."

"Sherlock, John can't be left here alone."

"Why? He's a fully-grown adult male with a military past. He doesn't need a babysitter."

"No, that's not quite what I meant." Lestrade said slowly.

Sherlock sighed. "Look, imagine John wakes up and discovers I'm not in the flat. He's just about intelligent enough to realise that this means I'm out looking for Scarlet, which will be infinitely more comforting to him that me staying here, staring at the ceiling."

Dimmock tried. "Sherlock, you're too close to this case. You can't help."

Sherlock spun round at him. "No, I'm not too close; she's not my daughter. I need to be there, looking, because I'm smarter than everyone in this room combined, which means I help, or we take twice as long to find her."

They all stared at him in silence, not wanting to upset him further.

Mycroft cleared his throat. "I can stay here with John."

Sherlock frowned then nodded. "Fine. Let's go then." He marched down the stairs, assuming that he would be followed.

They were quiet in the car as they drove to Windsor Great Park. Sherlock sat alone in the back suddenly felt the overwhelming lack of John, and wondered if he should have woken him to come with him.

He decided no. John would get too excited, too hopeful, and the thoughts of where Scarlet might be would overwhelm the actual solid evidence in front of him.

He noticed the acrid smell of smoke and burning rubber and metal and fuel before he could see the lights of the various emergency vehicles. As soon as Lestrade stopped his car Sherlock leapt out and strode away. He examined the ground by torchlight, for tire tracks and footprints but he didn't see anything unusual, and the lack of light made it difficult for him to make anything out.

He sniffed and wandered over to the burnt out wreck. It was a small van, a Ford Transit Connect, about ten years old. He could see from the paint on the wheel trims that it had been white.

The inside was still covered in bits of fire extinguishing foam and he found himself getting cross that he couldn't see anything clearly.

He spun round when someone tapped on his shoulder, but it was just Dimmock, holding some gloves out for him. He nodded and put them on. He started searching through the car in a methodical fashion. Every tiny scrap of paper from each of the wells in the door he took out and stared at before bagging it. In the glove-box he found an A to Z and the logbook for the van. He took them both out and back to Lestrade's car to examine them properly in the light.

He sat flicking through, page-by-page, hoping to find something, anything that might give him some sort of clue as to where Moriarty was going or where he had been.

The others waited patiently until he had finished.

Eventually he slammed both books down and glared angrily at Lestrade. "There's nothing here! There's nothing I can make any sense of here!"

"Do you think Scarlet was here?" Lestrade asked him.

"I don't know! I have no idea whether she was in that van or not! There are no clues here!"

"OK, well, I'll arrange to have everything removed to our warehouse and have our forensics go over it with a fine tooth come. If we can find anything at all that indicates Scarlet was in the car, then we'll know. But for now, let's go home."

Sherlock nodded, blankly. Lestrade went off to talk to Dimmock and make arrangements, and Sherlock picked the A to Z up again. He stared at it for a while.

When Lestrade came back, Sherlock was still staring. He wiped tears from his eyes.

"I need to keep this," he told Lestrade. "There's something about it that I can't place and I can't explain, but this is here for me, I know it is. I need to keep it."

Lestrade nodded. "OK. Sherlock, I'm going to take you home now. You can bring the book with you."

"Fine. Thank you."

When they got back to Baker Street, John was up and sat on the sofa with his hands wrapped round a cup of tea that he wasn't drinking. Mycroft was still in the kitchen.

It was quite clear to Sherlock that John hadn't slept for very long despite the medication, and he suspected that what sleep he had managed had been littered with nightmares.

He looked up expectantly at Sherlock. "Anything?"

"No not yet. We're still looking."

He nodded at the book in Sherlock's hand. "What's that?"

"A to Z".

John nodded slowly. "Were you hoping for an x marking the spot or something?"

Sherlock didn't know how to answer. He sat down next to John and flung the book down on the coffee table. He closed his eyes for a moment.

"Sherlock, you should go to bed." Mycroft called from the kitchen.

Sherlock didn't answer. He didn't move or open his eyes.

oOo

Scarlet woke up cold and stiff. She wondered what time it was and didn't feel particularly rested, though the light was beginning to grow in the room. Her wrist was still throbbing and felt stiff and she could feel a bruise on her cheekbone.

She looked around the room and took stock.

At some point Moriarty had been in while she was sleeping, and he'd left a slice of white bread and an apple on the desk for her, along with another half cup of water. She noticed that her bucket had been emptied or exchanged.

Her hair had been loosened again.

She shivered and ate the bread and the apple down to the core, then realised that she wasn't in a position to be fussy so she ate the core too. She finished with the water. She looked around the room and wondered what to do next.

She spent some more time examining the furniture in the room and she looked out of the window. The view was uninspiring; all she could see was a red brick wall of an adjacent building, which had been built about a meter away from this one. She climbed up onto the desk to see if she could see the ground from the top of the window but she couldn't. She bent to look upwards from the lowest point and could just about see the top of the opposite wall. She realised that this was why there had been no visible lights last night, and wondered who in their right mind would build a window onto an alleyway. It made this room particularly gloomy and dark. It also meant she had no outside clues as to her location.

She looked at the wallpaper on the wall opposite the bed. There were a couple of places it was peeling away from the wall, so she pulled a slither off. She was surprised that underneath, the wall had been painted dark red. She sat back on the bed and thought about this.

She took off her belt and looked at the buckle. Slowly and carefully she started biting and pulling at the soft leather and the stitching that held the buckle to the belt. About an hour later she'd successfully removed the buckle.

She now had a tool. She wasn't sure what to use this for, but she was glad she had it.

It was small enough for her to keep in her hand but it made an obvious lump in her jeans pocket. She replaced the leather strap around her waist and tied it there loosely. She looked around for a good hiding place.

As she heard the bolts on the door being pulled back, she simply dropped it between the mattress and the wall and she heard it hit the floor. She sat on the bed and watched Moriarty enter the room.

"Good morning, Scarlet," he said. "I need you to make another call for me."


	5. Chapter 5

**To celebrate my first 51 reviews. I just like the number. Pip. Also, this one ends a touch more up-beat than the previous couple. Or the next couple.  
**

Chapter 5

Moriarty walked across the room and put several items down on the desk. Scarlet watched him silently. She noticed a scratch on his right temple and was vaguely pleased with her handiwork. She wished she could have done more though. At the same time, she regretted her action because she knew it was what had lost her the torch.

"Now Scarlet," he said to her, "you showed that you think you're a dangerous little kitten yesterday. As an incentive for you to behave yourself, I've brought this along today."

He pulled a gun from his pocket.

"Do you think this is a real gun?"

"Yes."

"Good. Then what I suggest is that you do exactly as I say. Now I'm going to make a call to Uncle Sherlock, and you sit there quietly and don't say anything until I tell you to. Do you understand?"

She nodded, staring at the gun.

Moriarty took out his mobile phone and dialled Sherlock's number. He switched to speakerphone while it was still ringing.

Scarlet's breath caught as Sherlock answered. "Hello."

"Hello, Sherlock!" Moriarty sang. "How are you today?"

"What do you want? Where's Scarlet? I want to talk to her."

"I know you do. But guess what? Scarlet and I want to play a little game with you. Do you want to hear how it's going to work?"

There was a pause. "Tell me."

"Well first of all, Scarlet, why don't you tell Uncle Sherlock what I'm holding in my hands?"

Scarlet swallowed. "The phone in one, a gun in the other." She glanced up at Moriarty. "I don't know what kind of gun."

"So you two need to understand that if you break any of the rules of my game, I will kill her. Do you understand, Sherlock?"

"Yes."

"So here's what we're going to play. The game's called 'Come and Find Scarlet', Sherlock. Now Scarlet, can you be a good girl and tell Sherlock what's on the table."

"A dice and a stop watch."

"It's die in the singular, but close enough. What's going to happen is that I'll roll the die. Whatever number comes up, Scarlet is allowed to give you that amount of words. If she speaks one word more, I'll kill her. If you ask her a question, I'll kill her. If she doesn't say anything at all, I'll kill her. Do you both follow?"

"Yes," said Sherlock.

Scarlet nodded.

"She'll have ten seconds. Let's see how well you've trained her, Sherlock."

Scarlet shivered as Moriarty picked up the die and rolled it onto the desk. It showed the number three.

"Go," he said, and started the stopwatch. He held it so she could see the countdown.

It was five seconds before Scarlet was able to focus on what she needed to do. Three words, she needed three words. A number of possibilities passed through her said but she was panicking and wasn't sure what the best thing to say might be.

The clock kept ticking down and she fought tears.

Three, two one.

"I love you."

oOo

The phone line went dead.

Sherlock staggered backwards against the wall and slowly slid down to the floor.

"Did you get that?" Lestrade asked Dimmock, and was answered by a nod. "Trace the number."

"I'm already doing it."

"Sherlock?" Mycroft said, staring at his brother.

John was next to him, looking terrified. "Sherlock? What just happened?"

Sherlock looked up at them, and then looked around as if he couldn't quite work out why he was there. He shook himself and stood up.

"Sorry," he said.

"You need to rest," Mycroft told him again.

"I need a cigarette," Sherlock replied and he turned and ran down the stairs.

John grabbed his jacket and raced after him.

"Sherlock? Sherlock!"

Sherlock didn't slow or turn around. John caught hold of his arm but Sherlock angrily shrugged him off. He did stop though. He spun round, angry and confused, and glared at John.

"What do you want?"

"What did she say? What's he doing to her?"

"They recorded it. Go back and listen if you want to."

John stepped back from him. "Is she OK?" he persisted, blinking hard. "Was she able to talk to you again?"

Sherlock took some breaths, looking at John stood there, desperate.

He nodded. "She's frightened though. More than she was last night." He had expected John to get upset, but he just nodded at him. "Moriarty's invented a new game. She's allowed to give me clues, a few words at a time and I'm supposed to come and find her. She wasn't expecting it this time. She panicked."

"What did she say?"

Sherlock bit his lip and looked away.

"Well," John said, "she'll be ready next time. She won't be as panicked again."

Sherlock nodded. "I hope so."

"Do you still want cigarettes? You came out without your wallet."

"No. I just can't breathe in the flat."

"No. It's not right there at the moment, is it?"

"There are too many people there. I can't think."

"Can I help? I want to help, Sherlock. I need to help. I need her back. Please don't give up."

"Give up?"

"You look like you're giving up. You look like you want to walk away again."

Sherlock looked at him and felt the anger rising again. He shook it off. He knew it wasn't John's fault that he was being this desperate. Sherlock knew he would be too in the same position.

"Let's go back to the flat."

John nodded and followed him home.

Dimmock and Lestrade appeared to be having a heated discussion when they got back to the flat. They both went quiet as Sherlock and John came in though. John squeezed behind the chairs to put the kettle on.

"Sherlock," Dimmock started, "I'd like to take all of this back to the Yard. We need to set up a proper incident room. You're welcome to come in at any time but it might be better if we revert to standard form and started liaising via Sergeant Gregson."

Sherlock stared at him, then turned to Lestrade. "Were you able to trace the call?"

"No. He seems to be relaying it. We traced it to three different masts. Here, I'll show you."

He spread out a map on the kitchen table, but was hindered by the computers and other bits and pieces.

"Here, put it on the wall," Sherlock said. He grabbed it, along with a roll of sticking tape, and stuck the map up above the sofa with long strips.

John wandered over and gave each of them a cup of tea.

"Mrs Hudson's wall," he muttered.

"She won't care," Sherlock said, taking the tea.

"Right," said Lestrade, "these are the three masts the most recent phone call was bounced off." He marked three blue crosses on the map. "The SIM cards are obviously different each time. The first one was bought from here," he marked a black cross, the one he used today was bought here," he marked a second cross.

"The car was way over here," Sherlock said, marking the wall a long way to the left of the map. "I wish I'd had better light. It's fairly clear she was transferred to a second car, but I don't know if it happened in the park or elsewhere."

"Why does it matter?" John asked.

"It tells us whether he's working alone or not. If the car was moved after the transfer, then he's got a lackey."

"What's your instinct?"

Sherlock thought for a moment. "My instinct is no, but we shouldn't overlook the fact that he's worked in networks before. It's his preferred mode of operation to have people around him. He doesn't like to get his hands dirty, remember.

He took a mouthful of tea and instantly spat it out.

"How much sugar did you put in this?"

"I'm not sure, I lost count. Drink it though, I'd prefer it if you didn't faint from low blood sugar if it's all the same to you. What do we do next?"

Sherlock looked at Lestrade.

"Well, what we'd like to do," Lestrade answered, "Is start getting pictures out there, see what people might have seen."

John frowned. "Why hasn't that already happened?"

"We didn't want to spook him," Dimmock answered. "At this point, in my opinion, it's clear that he'd prefer her alive. I think we should get her image out there. His too. Put out an appeal for information."

Lestrade turned to Sherlock. "What do you think?"

"It's what we should do," Dimmock insisted. "The Met have years and years of experience with missing person cases."

"Dimmock," Lestrade snapped, "he's smarter than you, he's met Moriarty, and this isn't a pissing contest." He turned back to Sherlock. "What do you think?"

"I... think so. Yes. He doesn't fear the police; I don't think he cares what you do. You should take it to the Yard though; it's not my area."

"What about us?" John asked. "Are we just supposed to sit and wait for the next call?"

Sherlock looked at him. "I think you need sleep. And food."

"So do you."

"I can't eat right now."

"Well neither can I."

Sherlock scratched his head. "OK, well, let's go back to the A to Z".

oOo

Moriarty had laughed for a long time. It was still ringing in Scarlet's ears. She was cursing herself too, she knew it had been a waste and she was sure that Sherlock would be angry with her. He'd want to win the game. He'd want to find her, of course, but he'd also just want to win the game and she, as his teammate, had let him down.

As soon as Moriarty had left, she could think of a number of phrases that would have been better. "Block of flats" for example. Or, "Red brick wall". She sat on the bed, trying hard not to cry. She was exhausted and she was now aching over most of her body. Her head was throbbing, which she put down to dehydration and caffeine withdrawal. Her lips were dry and had bled where she'd been biting on them. She was feeling very sorry for herself.

She looked down at her hand, to where her ring should be.

She closed her eyes and accepted the fact that she'd never felt as low as she did right at that moment. She took a deep breath and forced herself to think positively.

She thought about her Dad and Sherlock. She knew that they both loved her. She knew that they thought she was better than she believed herself to be. She knew that they would expect more from her. They were both intelligent people. It occurred to her that if they felt she could survive this, she probably could.

She thought about her Mum. She was no further away from her now than she had been two days ago. She'd always believed that her Mum was somewhere close, watching. She didn't know how true that was, but it was comforting so she let herself believe it. In which case, her Mum was with her right then, in that room. She was not alone.

She took another deep breath, and took stock.

She'd eaten and had a drink. It wasn't quite enough of either, food or drink, but she wasn't likely to die of starvation any time soon.

She had a tool now. She pulled the bedstead slightly and retrieved her buckle. She wasn't completely sure what she should use this for. But it felt good that she had it in her hand right now.

Moriarty appeared to want to leave her alone for long periods of time. She didn't have any evidence to suggest he was watching her in any way. The room was small and bare enough for her to be sure there was no recording device. It was as if he just switched her off in his mind when he didn't need her. He didn't seem to want to hurt her with anything other than words, and didn't attack her until she'd attacked him. He was making her as uncomfortable as possible without touching her.

She now had a task. If Moriarty didn't suddenly change the rules of the game, she would be allowed one to six words to give to Sherlock. That Moriarty wouldn't change the game was a bit of a gamble, but she decided he was likely to keep going with this as long as she behaved herself. So what she needed to do now, would be to think of six different phrases that might help Sherlock find her.

She didn't have much confidence in her ability to find the best things to say, but she knew she didn't need to. Sherlock was clever, so he'd be able to make up for any lack of brilliance on her part.

All in all, she decided, it could be much worse.

She suddenly stood up, with her buckle in her hand, and made a long scar in the wallpaper of the wall opposite, from top to bottom. The long, twisting, streamer of wallpaper fell to the ground leaving a dark red line.

She decided she would not be defeated quite yet. She decided she still had a chance.

She smiled.

oOo

The flat seemed quieter. Lestrade was still there, but he was keeping is distance, staying in the kitchen with his laptop. Dimmock had gone to sort out the incident room and get started with the press. Mycroft had at some point melted away going somewhere to do something. Sherlock didn't know what, but he felt relieved that he no longer had big brother smothering him.

Mike had called in the check on John. He was evidently worried, but he wasn't pushy. He'd brought food and more pills, which he'd been thanked for. He hadn't stayed long.

Mrs Hudson was calmer today too, just coming in to make tea for everyone, and then leaving again. Both Sherlock and John wished they could do more to comfort her, but they both lacked the energy. They could hear Lestrade quietly updating her every now and then.

Sergeant Gregson was coming and going too, but she'd wisely restricted herself to using the kitchen door and updating Lestrade. At some point Lestrade's girlfriend, Helen, had been in too, bringing him clothing, bedding and provisions. No one had questioned the fact that Lestrade wouldn't be leaving any time soon.

John and Sherlock had settled themselves side by side on the sofa. Sherlock was methodically going through the A to Z. Each time he turned the page, he'd hold the book up at an angle to the light, looking for marks and scores where someone might have rested a pencil while they were taking notes. He found nothing.

John watched him as he did this. He wasn't really paying attention though. He was daydreaming and waiting for the phone to ring.

Sherlock sighed suddenly and threw the book down. "There's nothing there. There's not a single mark on it. It's like he's decided to keep a pristine book for twenty years then just put it in the car."

John frowned. "Twenty years?"

"Yes, it's out of date. There are a couple of major road changes…" he drifted off. "Oh! Oh, John I've been so stupid!"

He flicked through to page fifteen. "Deadman!" he said.

John frowned. "Is he threatening us?"

"No, no he's not. This is the book, John, this is the A to Z!"

John stared blankly at him.

"Do you know how many different formats of the A to Z there are out there? It's not even the only map book of London, the AA produces its own, as does the RAC… it was entirely luck that night that I picked up the exact same printing of the map of London that Chan was using for her book code! But this is it! This is the exact format and reprint she was using! He doesn't want us to use it to find a specific place; he wants to remind us of the Blind Banker case!"

"For what?"

"I don't' know. But we need to go to the Museum of Antiquities. He wants us to go there. Do you feel up to coming too?"

"Oh yes, I feel better now than I did five minutes ago."

"Good, let's go."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Sherlock stormed around the National Antiquities Museum. John had thought he was moving far too quickly to actually see anything, but he'd seen Sherlock work this way before so he left him to it.

The Museum had been rearranged since the Blind Banker case. Probably more than once. The room where Soo Lin had been killed now held a display of early clothing from Russia. It took them a while to find the ancient Chinese pottery. They found a cabinet holding the same teapots she had been working on. They wandered around the room for a while but didn't find anything at all unusual.

Sherlock stopped and cursed suddenly, frightening a group of pensioners on a day out.

"There's nothing here!" he said to John.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes I'm sure. There's nothing here. I was so sure too, John. I was absolutely certain that this is where he wanted us to come."

John thought for a moment. "Why here?" he suddenly asked. "This wasn't the only location connected to that case. There was also the Bank. There was the Lucky Cat, there was…"

"Both flats, the train siding, the circus theatre…"

"The Tramway."

"Yes! The Tramway! I don't know why I didn't think of it immediately! Of course it will be there! What better place than where you were taken to and nearly killed! Come on!"

Sherlock turn and ran from the building and John chased after him.

It took them less than half an hour to reach the Tramway. Sherlock took out a small torch that he had constantly in his coat pocket, and John took out his Maglite and they wandered into the tunnel. The tunnel felt colder and darker than it had on the evening he had been kidnapped. There was a smell too, that he hadn't noticed before. It was of damp and decay and stale urine.

They walked slowly, going deeper into the tunnels. There was an old oil drum that had had a fire in it that evening, but no-one had been moved to take it away afterwards. There was a pile of debris in the bottom of it. John widened his beam and looked more closely. Sherlock was with him and he suddenly thrust his hand it to pull something out. It was a thin, light blue, plastic, wallet with a card inside.

It was Scarlet's oyster card.

They looked at each other for a moment. Sherlock examined the wallet and the card closely, checking for any hidden notes or messages, but there was nothing here. He handed it to John.

There was no question that it was Scarlet's. She'd lost Oyster cards at the rate of four or five a year, but each time she got a new one she personalised the wallet in some way. This one had a snowflakes drawn on it biro. It was unmistakably her work.

Sherlock continued to look around the tunnel. After a moment he came back to John.

"I think this is where she was moved to the other car. There are clear tracks of two different vehicles here recently. I think there's an indication of someone being dragged or carried here but it's faint. It's not much, but let's go to the Yard and get Dimmock to send a team here."

John nodded, only half listening. He was tracing over the snowflakes with his finger. He followed Sherlock back out of the tunnel and into a cab without saying anything.

oOo

At Scotland Yard they were quickly ushered through to an office that had been turned into an incident room for this case. There were a couple of police officer's Sherlock vaguely recognised, along with Dimmock and Gregson.

There were several large pictures of Scarlet on the walls. Sherlock felt John stop and shudder when he went in there. He left him by the door and took the Oyster card over to Dimmock.

"You can read this, right?"

Dimmock took it and nodded.

Sherlock explained what was and where they had found it. Dimmock listened intently.

"Good, thank you. We'll add the area around the Tramway to our hotspots and I'll send a team of officers to take her photo door to door there."

Sherlock looked at the map on the wall. There were various pins in it, each holding a tag with a number on it. "Have you got anything decent yet?" he asked Dimmock.

"It's not going badly," Dimmock replied. "It's early days and there's bound to be some red herrings. Some of these sound good though. We have pictures of her, but the one of him is old and out of focus. Do you think you'll be able to work with someone on a photofit, or an artist's impression?"

Sherlock looked at his watch. "Yes, but I'd like to get to the next clue today if I can."

"Next clue? Isn't that just a matter of waiting for the next phone call?"

Sherlock realised Dimmock was slightly behind the times. "Yes, but he's playing a second, simultaneous game. He's been around London leaving hints. That Oyster card is Scarlet's. He left it in a place where we'd had a run in with him before. He's working through our past cases. I don't know whether there's a clue on the card, whether he or she has used it since the kidnapping, or whether he's just taunting me with it, but I'd like to know. What else do you need me to do? Should John release an appeal?"

Dimmock seemed momentarily shocked that Sherlock was even asking his opinion. "No, it's not usual with a child of this age. There's a good chance we'd be putting people off if they thought there was an odd family dynamic, you know, a really clingy parent. It's usual for a missing toddler, not so much for a missing teen."

Sherlock frowned and was about to protest when he found John pulling at his arm.

"Sherlock, are we likely to be much longer here?"

Sherlock noticed he looked like he was flagging. He was looking tired and grey and slightly shivery.

"I need to be here a while longer; they want me to sort out a picture of Moriarty. Could you go home though? You're looking dreadful. You need to sleep and eat, John."

"So do you." John said, stubbornly.

"John, I know, but I can last a bit longer and you can't. Please, you're no good to her collapsed on the floor. I'll ask that Gregson woman to drive you home."

John nodded.

oOo

Scarlet worked on her picture for as long as she could, but the light was fading fast in the dingy room. She'd created the entire outline of a tree, taking up the whole of the wall. In some places, the scoring was deeper, causing the pale pink of the plaster to shine through the dark red. She liked the effect. Eventually she began to feel that Moriarty was likely to show up again and she hid her buckle again. She hid it in a slightly more focused fashion this time, deliberately pulling the bed back, and sliding it under a loose piece of carpet.

She lay down on the bed feeling tired, hungry and cold. She wondered if she would be given anything else to eat today.

She ran through her six phrases in her mind. She had a couple of spares to use depending on what number came up against a list of things she wanted Sherlock to hear first. She felt ready.

Sure enough, Moriarty appeared in her room just as it was turning to dusk. Once again, he carried the torch, which filled the room with shadows. He stopped for a moment to look at the picture she'd started carving. Scarlet sat up.

"Scarlet, I think that you and I might not have got off to the best start."

Scarlet stared at him. "You kidnapped me. It's not the best way of endearing yourself to someone."

"Well yes, but only because I had to. None of this is your fault at all. All of this was for Sherlock. You should understand that it's his fault that you're here."

Scarlet didn't say anything to that.

"Well anyway, I don't want you to be uncomfortable. I can't offer you much; this flat isn't really set up with all the mod cons any more, but you have at least got a bed. You've got a desk too, even though you're not using it." He turned around to have a proper look at the picture.

"This is good. It's funny; I'd have thought you would have put all your energy into escaping. If you'd have put half as much effort into that as you have into this tree here, you'd probably be free by now."

"I don't know how to escape," she told him. Her eyes shone in the torch-light. "I know how to draw an apple tree though."

He looked at her, surprised, then laughed at her again. Scarlet flushed, embarrassed, but she didn't look away.

"I've brought you a present," he told her. "Would you like to see?" She didn't move, but he put down a plastic hairbrush and a hair-band on the desk.

She looked at them, confused.

"You seem to feel more comfortable with your hair tied back. I've noticed that. Why don't you tie it back now?" She made no move to do so. "Tie your hair back, Scarlet."

It was an instruction and she shuddered when she thought of what might happen if she didn't obey. She picked up the hairbrush and started brushing her hair. It was very tangled by now, and felt greasy. She desperately wanted to have a shower and get clean and warm again. She could hear her hair breaking on the brush but she kept going until it was neat and smooth. She wove it into a plait, and tied the end. She put the brush back down on the desk.

"There now, isn't that better? You know Scarlet, you're quite a pretty little thing."

Scarlet shuddered.

"I brought you a bit more water. It's just on the desk there, but first we need to make our next phone call to Uncle Sherlock."

She watched as he dialled the number and flicked it to speaker so that she could hear the ringing.

Her heart leapt as she heard "hello?"

oOo

Sherlock had just made it back to the flat when his phone rang. John and Lestrade were instantly next to him, but again, he didn't put it through to speaker.

"Scarlet and I are getting to know each other a little better," Moriarty told him. "She really is quite lovely, isn't she? After some initial upset she's remarkably well trained. I had to discipline her a wee bit, but she seems to have settled down quite well now."

Sherlock blazed with rage at the thought of what Moriarty might have done to her. He stayed silent thought.

"Shall we play, Sherlock?"

"Yes."

He heard the sound of a die being rolled.

There was a second or two, then Scarlet's voice.

"There's no running water."

The phone line went dead. Sherlock put his phone down, his eyes shining, and with a huge smile on his face.

"You were right, John, she didn't panic this time. She was ready, and she'd clearly thought about it, and she's given me an excellent clue. Oh clever Scarlet, clever, clever girl!"

John found himself smiling too. "What did she say?"

"She said 'there's no running water'".

John's face fell, and Lestrade looked blank too. "What does that mean?"

"It means she's in an abandoned house, flat, or warehouse. She's somewhere where there ought to be access to running water, but there isn't, because the water's been cut off."

"Couldn't she mean a river?" Lestrade asked.

"No, it's December. It's not so cold that rivers aren't frozen but it's been rainy enough for them all to be full."

John had sat down on the sofa again. "But there are loads of empty buildings in London, if she's even in London any more. It doesn't seem narrowed down at all!"

"Yes that's true, but not nearly so many as non-abandoned buildings; she's narrowed it down for us considerably. And not all empty houses will have had the water cut off! Dimmock is already narrowing the field with his appeal. Then we're just looking at abandoned buildings around the areas where there have been several possible sightings."

He looked at John, looking forlorn. "It's a good clue, John! We couldn't expect her to give a road name or a house number. She's done well."

John nodded again. "Yes, she's done well. Good. Good." He looked at Sherlock. "So what do we do next?"

Sherlock looked at him and sighed. "You rest, John. You need to rest."

"So do you. I need to help if I can. Sherlock, it's better if I'm with you. Isn't it?"

Sherlock thought about examining the car in the park. He recalled how lost and lonely he felt, and how much better he felt when John had been next to him when he was looking at the A to Z.

He nodded. "Yes," he said slowly. "Have you eaten though?"

"I had toast."

Sherlock looked across at Lestrade who nodded.

"I had toast, Sherlock!" John said. He marched into the kitchen and picked up two apples. "Here, one for me and one for you. Now where next?"

Sherlock took the apple. "OK, well after Blind Banker it was the game. It started with Carl Powers."

"The pool then."

"Yes, the pool."

They both headed out the door again.

Ten minutes later they were back at the pool complex. The bomb had been fairly devastating, but it had been rebuilt. The managers had taken the opportunity to do some upgrades too, but the basic layout was the same.

Like had at the museum, Sherlock strode around quickly and efficiently while John watched him.

"This was where I came in," Sherlock told him. "And this is where you came in." He looked around both corridors. There was nothing there.

"Moriarty came in from over there," Sherlock said. "In that room. What is it?" He strode in and found it was a storeroom with various gym mats and floatation aids. He looked round carefully, while John watched. He turned back to John with a sigh.

"There's nothing here. I don't understand it. There's nothing here." He sat down on a pile of mats.

John nodded, feeling depressed. He looked out at the pool. It was open for late lane swimming for adults only. He watched for a while as various people powered up and down the lanes. He wondered how Carl had felt that day. Getting into the water, feeling it against his skin. His clothes neatly packed away in his locker. His whitened trainers.

"Wait a minute!" John turned around to Sherlock. "This is the wrong case."

Sherlock frowned. "This is Carl Powers."

"Yes, for Moriarty and Carl, yes, but not for us. This is the Bruce Partington Plans for us."

Sherlock's eyes widened as he suddenly understood. "Yes! You're right, John! Carl Powers is..."

"Two two one C Baker Street."

Sherlock leapt up and stormed past and John followed him.

When they got back to the flat, John spent quite an amount of time trying to get Mrs Hudson to understand what they wanted and why. Sherlock lost patience and stormed through and grabbed the keys.

He unlocked the door and they went into the flat.

"She really should do something with this place you know," John said.

Sherlock frowned at the randomness of this statement, but he continued looking around the flat in the torchlight.

"I thought of it for Scarlet you know. I thought she might want some more privacy in a bit. It needs some work, and Mrs Hudson's right about the damp. It's all fixable though. I thought maybe if I sold the Kentish Town flat, and used some of the money to renovate this one, Scarlet could live here maybe. She'll be at University next year. She won't want to live with her parents forever." John went quiet, fallen back into his own thoughts.

Sherlock had only been listening to this ramble with half an ear. Suddenly the beam of his torch caught something glinting on the carpet. He bent down and picked up a small sapphire ring. He handed it across to John.

John stared at it, not moving. He swayed and stepped back, and then his breath broke in a huge sob.

He controlled himself. "I'm sorry, God, I'm sorry," he muttered.

"You're exhausted," Sherlock told him. "Come on. Let's go upstairs. You need to go to bed."

"What time is it?"

"It doesn't matter. You need to go to bed."

"I can't. I can't sleep when she's not here. I can't."

"Come on, John." Sherlock said quietly.

He led John by his elbow, all the way up the stairs and up to his bedroom. As they passed the open door of Scarlet's room, John's eyes flickered towards it and he stopped and looked in there for a while.

"Come on, John," Sherlock said again.

He got John to lie down on his bed, but he looked so utterly lost. Sherlock lay down on the bed next to him, intending to stay with him for a few moments. John's hand sought Sherlock's and he clung to him.

"We have to find her." John said.

Sherlock stared into the darkness in thought.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Sherlock stayed in John's room all night while John slept fitfully next to him. Sherlock may have dozed himself, but he couldn't be sure.

John finally woke properly at around five, and he couldn't be settled again. Eventually they both went downstairs for tea and breakfast.

Lestrade was still there. He appeared to be camping on the sofa.

"Was there any news last night?" Sherlock asked him while John made the tea.

"Yes," said Lestrade, yawning. "But nothing substantial enough for me to want to wake you. The forensics team found clear evidence of Scarlet in the van. It was hair apparently, nothing more concerning than that. They agreed that there was evidence of a two-car meeting at the Tramway, but can't find evidence of anyone in addition to Moriarty and Scarlet. There hasn't been much come back on sightings there though, but there was CCTV of a red Peugeot that we're interested in. Dimmock's adding it to his info and putting it out there along with the pictures. On that... not much concrete, not much of anything clear. Leads are being followed. That's all I can tell you."

He took a cup of tea from John.

"What about us?" John asked Sherlock. "Where should we go next?"

Sherlock rubbed his eyes. "Which case is next? We've done Carl Powers, so that makes it... Janus Cars. Let's go to the yard where the car was found and see what we can find."

"Sherlock, are you sure you're well enough?" Lestrade asked him. "You're beginning to look... odd."

Sherlock frowned at him. "And you're beginning to sound like Mycroft." He glanced round the flat. "Where is he anyway?"

"He's at his office. He's liaising at least hourly with me here and with Dimmock at Scotland Yard."

Sherlock grunted. It didn't escape him, however, how much time and energy everyone was putting into this search. Scarlet was much loved, he thought.

He and John waited a few hours until daylight before they headed out again. They caught a cab down to the yard and the Mazda that was waiting for them there was startlingly obvious.

The walked quickly down the ramp to the car. Sherlock was briefly worried about what they might see when they opened the door. The previous car had been covered with blood. He didn't know how he'd cope if he opened the door to find the same thing again. He briefly wished John wasn't with him.

He pulled the car door open and found that the car's interior was in pristine condition. He sighed with relief.

He quickly opened the glove box and found a business card for Ibis cars and a bulging A4 envelope. It was unmarked but he opened it anyway and pulled out a coiled plait of golden-brown hair.

He was so shocked he nearly dropped it, but gathered his wits again.

"Oh God, oh God…" John was muttering from behind him.

Sherlock spun round. "John, it's just hair! It will grow back and it wouldn't even have hurt her when he cut it off. It could be so much worse. It could be teeth or fingers or toes…"

John turned pale and his nostrils flared. He turned away trying to retain his self-control and breathing hard.

"John, I'm sorry… I'm sorry I didn't mean that! It was a stupid thing to say."

He reached out and put a hand on John's back.

John spun round angrily. "Sherlock! Sherlock I don't think you realise how much this is hurting me! It's like a physical pain and I can't shake it off and nothing brings relief! I feel raw! It's like constant, full body, needles stabbing into me, and it's driving me mad!

Sherlock reached out for him again.

"No, Sherlock! No, I hate this, and what I hate most of all is that it doesn't seem to be hurting you at all! All this talk of 'she's my daughter too' is bullshit! You're not feeling any of this at all!"

He stared at the envelope in Sherlock's hand. He shuddered and turned and threw up, leaning against the car.

Sherlock stood there, horrified. He waited until he'd finished and then handed him a handkerchief.

"John, this is hurting me." Sherlock stood close to John and spoke quietly and earnestly to him. "It's hurting me so badly that I can barely think. I've never wanted to run away and hide as much as I want to right now, but I can't… I can't give in to it. She needs me to think. She's completely dependant on me not stopping. So are you. John I can't give in."

John listened, blankly.

"I just want you to find her," he muttered.

"John, I'm going to take you home now," he said. "I'm going to call Mike to come back and see you too."

"No, I don't need that. I'm fine."

"No, you're not. And you shouldn't be. I wouldn't expect you to be. I'm going to take you home."

John leant back against the car and looked at him. "Sherlock, I don't know how long I can keep on like this. I just... I can't keep feeling like this forever. What if she never comes back? I'll be spent. I am completely spent."

"You can keep going a while longer, John. You have to. I'm not going to let her come back to a house that doesn't have you in it."

He turned and walked away and John followed him back up the ramp.

"I don't understand why he's doing this." John said to him. "He's given us a game to play according to his rules, so why is he playing this second game?"

"He's trying to distract me. He's trying to throw me off. This is the whole point of it; he wants to cause me pain."

"Oh." John glanced up at him. "I'm sorry, Sherlock."

Sherlock shook his head slightly. "Not your fault, John."

oOo

Scarlet woke up feeling as though her tongue was three sizes too big for her mouth. Her head was still throbbing and she felt weak and strangely feverish though the air around her felt cold.

She had noticed the bitter taste in her mouth as soon as she'd gulped the water down the night before. She had realised her mistake as soon as she put the cup down.

It took her a few minutes to notice the short hair on the back of her head. There was no mirror in the room so she felt it with both hands, feeling each ragged cut that the scissors had made. She was too tired to cry. She felt numb.

It was already light outside, so she knew that Moriarty would be there soon and she refrained from checking that he hadn't found the buckle. She looked across at her apple tree, trying to work out whether she could be bothered to finish it. She knew she had to. She had to find the strength somewhere.

Like the day before, there was a slice of bread and an apple on the table, along with a half-cup of water. She sniffed at the water before taking a small sip. She couldn't stop herself gulping the rest down, and was relieved that it tasted fresh. She ate the bread and the apple.

She tried to think of more clues for Sherlock, but Moriarty was with her, in the room, before she could focus properly.

She refused to comment on her hair. She refused to look away from him. She just watched as he went through the ritual with the gun, the stopwatch, the phone and the die.

She couldn't even feel joy when Sherlock answered. He sounded tired and upset. The responsibility to give him a good clue weighed heavily on her shoulders. When Moriarty rolled a one, she nearly cried.

The seconds had ticked away again before she realised he was waiting for her to give her prepared answer.

"Flats," she muttered, hoping she'd been loud enough for him to hear her.

Moriarty grinned at her, and left the room.

She sat there for a few minutes before retrieving her buckle, still safely where she'd left it. She had a momentary buzz as she realised she had a secret from Moriarty. She forced herself to walk over to the picture and leaned her forehead on it for a while.

She whispered to herself. "I am Scarlet Watson, I am John and Mary Watson's daughter, and Sherlock Holmes helped raise me. I will not give up."

Then she went back to work.

oOo

Sherlock and Lestrade stared at each other across the kitchen table.

John had refused to go back to bed when they'd come home, so Sherlock had settled for bundling him up on the sofa instead. John hadn't fought this too strongly; he was beginning to accept the fact that he was weak through stress.

"Flats?" Lestrade asked.

"Yes, I think that's what she said. It's likely and she's narrowing the field down for me. I wonder how many abandoned blocks of flats there are in London?" He was almost smiling.

"But do we know the whole block is abandoned, or just the flat that she's in? How does cutting off the water work with flats? Is it one stop-cock for the whole block, or is it one per flat?"

"I don't know, I'm not a plumber," Sherlock snapped.

John shifted on the sofa slightly and Sherlock stopped to listen in case he needed anything.

"What do we do next then?" Lestrade asked.

"I'll go to the Hickman. That's the next case." He looked up at Lestrade. "Will you come with me?"

Lestrade nodded. "Of course I will."

"We'll just wait for Mike to show up. He's on his way."

"I don't need a babysitter!" John called from the lounge.

Sherlock smiled, but ignored him. Lestrade went back to check his email while he waited. Sherlock was completely still.

As soon as Mike arrived he bounded out of the door, with Lestrade behind him.

Just like the Museum and the swimming pool, the Hickman proved fruitless. Sherlock stormed out and kicked a dustbin in frustration.

"Sherlock, stop it! This has happened before; right case, wrong venue. Where else was relevant with this one?"

Sherlock sat down tiredly on the steps outside. Eventually, after a long silence he answered. "South bank. Where we found the body."

"Fine, then let's go there."

He went and hailed a cab. Sherlock pulled himself up and followed him.

The tide was half way in when they got to the river. There was just enough mud and shingle for them to safely walk on so they both went down onto the shore. Sherlock looked towards the city, struggling to focus his thoughts for a moment.

"What are we looking for?" Lestrade asked, pulling Sherlock back to the present.

"I don't know. Something of Scarlet's. Something that shouldn't be here."

They walked up and down for half an hour. Lestrade was just on the point of giving up and telling Sherlock to come away again, when Sherlock focussed on something wedged in a crack on the river wall that he'd walked past twice before.

It was an ice-blue mobile phone. It was Scarlet's.

Sherlock picked it up and stared at it for a long, long time.

"Sherlock? Let's go home." Lestrade said.

Sherlock stared at the phone all the way back to Baker Street. When they got there, Mike was sat in an armchair, reading a newspaper while John was still on the sofa, staring, motionless, at the ceiling.

Sherlock couldn't tell if he had been sedated or not and it didn't seem polite to ask.

They sat in silence all staring, for about half an hour before it occurred to Sherlock to turn the phone on. It instantly beeped with an incoming text message. Sherlock briefly wondered if it was one of the same numbers that Moriarty had used before, but his mind wasn't capable of knowing at that moment. He looked at the text.

'_The pool. Midnight. No police.'_

He handed it to Lestrade, who looked at it without speaking.

Sherlock suddenly stood up and pocketed his own phone. He quickly left the flat. Lestrade let him go.

He wandered the streets for several hours, not knowing what to do next or where to go. He wondered if Moriarty intended to bring Scarlet to the pool with him. He wondered if he would be required to relive that night with John from so many years ago. It had been hard enough the first time. He wasn't sure whether he'd survive it again.

And with Scarlet there. _Scarlet_. How would he be able to stand that? Would it be easier or harder than with John. Harder. Of course harder. Scarlet would need protecting in a way that John hadn't.

And if he lost her, he'd lose them both.

He was aware that he had been followed by a black car for most of his walk. He was torn between getting into it and crying in his brother's arms or stalking off through the footpaths in Regent's Park.

He opted for park. He stood outside the Cow and Coffee Bean for a long while, staring. He looked at the footpath where Scarlet had scuffed her shoes the week before.

He desperately wanted to go home and find her there, with John, putting the Christmas decorations up. Two years previously, she'd made a duo of angels in papier mache for the top of the tree. One had John's face, the other Sherlock's. Both of them were pulling faces.

He'd spent years trying to perfect a formula for fake reindeer dung to put on the hearth. He was very close to finding something that was realistic but something that John wouldn't get upset about.

He rounded the corner and looked at the house. He knew he had no option but to go back inside.

Sergeant Gregson was there, giving John an update. John was staring at her, either trying to concentrate on what she was saying, or to block her out. Sherlock couldn't tell which. She was telling him about the red car, which they hadn't yet traced, and the response to the photos, which wasn't particularly high or particularly substantial.

Sherlock wondered why she was there at all giving them no news.

"Have you generated a list of abandoned or empty flats? All you need to do is get a list from the water company."

Sergeant Gregson jumped when he spoke.

"We have, but in zones one and two there are over a hundred possible properties, and we don't know that she is in zones one or two or further out."

"Search them all."

"We've started."

Lestrade looked at Sherlock. "There's also an issue that we don't go in all guns blazing, Sherlock. We don't want to upset him."

John made a sudden movement, but settled himself back down. Sherlock looked at him for a long while.

Sherlock's phone suddenly rang. As he went to answer it, John sat up properly. Sherlock put a hand on his shoulder before answering. He didn't switch to speaker.

"Hello?"

"Oh Sherlock, your little Scarlet's such a well behaved child, isn't she! I don't know how you managed it."

Sherlock gritted his teeth.

"And she's such a pretty little thing isn't she? Even without the hair. Imagine what her children will look like!"

Sherlock swallowed and closed his eyes.

"What? You're not coming out to play? I think you are, Sherlock. I think you are. Shall we play?"

"Yes."

There was the sound of a die being rolled.

Scarlet spoke. Her voice was quavering slightly. Sherlock could imagine her counting the words off on her fingers.

"Window; can't see the ground."

The line went dead. Sherlock almost groaned in frustration. He knew she was in a block of flats. This wasn't useful information. He'd have given his right arm to be able to ask her what she could hear, what she could smell, in which direction the sun rose in her window. He rubbed his forehead with his hand.

There was nothing to do now but wait and see what would happen at the pool at midnight.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Sherlock sat on the edge of the sofa, with John's feet resting against his leg. Neither of them said anything or moved.

Mike had vanished at some point, and Gregson let herself out too, though Lestrade stayed with them, working on his computer or making them tea. He didn't disturb them much though.

Sherlock stared at the clock, wishing the time away. He knew they weren't going to hear from Scarlet again, and he also knew that they wouldn't find the red car, or the empty flat or Scarlet.

He just wanted to get this done.

At half past eleven, he abruptly got up and left the flat. John didn't move, and though Lestrade watched him go he didn't ask where he was going.

Sherlock entered the pool quietly. He stood in the corner and waited. He didn't call out, or posture or look around. He just waited.

Moriarty entered from the opposite corner. Both of them stood there, with the light from the water flickering over their faces, looking at each other.

"Well, this takes me back!" Moriarty called, loudly to him.

He started walking along the short edge of the pool to the length where Sherlock was waiting. Sherlock waited, silent and impassive.

"It's just like old times, isn't it Sherlock? Perhaps we should do this more often? It could be like a reunion."

Sherlock started walking the length too. As he got closer to the middle, his eyes glanced towards the short corridor where John had entered, years before.

"Oh you're right!" Moriarty said. "Some of the family is missing."

Sherlock's eyes flickered again.

"Oh I didn't bring her with me, Sherlock." Moriarty said. They were now standing about ten meters apart, and both came to a halt.

"Where is she?" Sherlock asked him, fighting to keep his voice level.

"Oh, haven't you worked it out? I'm surprised at you, Sherlock! Of course little Scarlet's clues weren't the best were they? She's not going to get very far with those brains in her pretty, little, head."

"What do you want?"

"I want you, Sherlock. I've always wanted you. The problem is, the point at which we find ourselves, is that you are either going to be by my side, or you're going to be dead. It's entirely up to you of course, but I simply can't have you in my way any more. I should have killed you years ago of course. It was a mere accident that I didn't. Fate, as it were. But I've come to think, that even if I had have done, it would have been a terrible waste of your brilliant brain. I want you with me, Sherlock."

"No."

"Oh, sorry, I forgot to say, as payment for your services, I would return Scarlet, safe and well, to her Father. You couldn't see them any more, obviously, though I don't think you'd really want to after I've broken you completely, but all their hurt would vanish."

Sherlock watched him for a moment.

"What do I have to do?" he finally asked.

Moriarty walked a few meters towards Sherlock, and put a small, black, cylindrical object on the ground in between them. He backed off again.

"What is it?" Sherlock asked.

"It's a trigger. You should pick it up and have a look."

Sherlock walked towards it and picked it up. It was little more than a hand-held remote device with just the button.

"What gets blown up?" he asked.

"A block of flats. There are four bombs attached to the central support columns. The whole thing will come down. It's just down the road; I didn't want you to miss the explosion. I want to see the look on your face as it falls to the ground. All those beautiful lives, lost."

"No."

"No? Oh you surprise me, Sherlock, you really do! I would have thought you'd want to get dear little Scarlet back to her poor Daddy. She's very scared you know. She's trying to be brave but no-one seems to have taught her how."

"How do I know that Scarlet's not in the flats that you've rigged with the bomb?"

"Oh that would be funny, wouldn't it? Making you kill her yourself! No no, Sherlock. Scarlet is all on her own, miles and miles away from here. You know that she is."

"I could just kill you now. We'd find her."

"No you wouldn't. Not in time anyway. Poor little Scarlet will be dead as a doornail by tomorrow morning at ten thirty." He glanced at his watch, theatrically. "Oh, it's today already. This is the day that Scarlet Watson dies."

Sherlock's breath hitched and he tried hard not to let it show on the outside.

Moriarty continued. "So as I see it, you have two choices. Detonate the bomb, and we return Scarlet to John, no harm done. Well, not much harm anyhow. Or you can stand there while I shoot you dead. Which is it going to be? How far do you think our dear, dear John will get by ten thirty tomorrow without you to guide him? So what's it going to be? Let me focus your mind a little. You have ten seconds before I shoot you. Ten."

Sherlock looked at the device in his hands. Clearly he couldn't push the trigger. Scarlet would never forgive him. She wouldn't be able to live her life knowing hundreds of lives had been traded for hers. It would destroy her. He couldn't do it.

"Nine."

But if he didn't push the trigger, he would be dead, John would be alone and there was a clear possibility that Scarlet would never be found anyway. It seemed cruel to imagine all three of them wiped into nothingness.

"Eight."

If he did push the trigger, he would only be acting as an extension of Moriarty. It would really be Moriarty who carried out the killings. He wondered if Scarlet would see it that way or whether she would entirely blame him.

"Seven."

She would entirely blame him. For whatever reason, Scarlet believed that Sherlock was all-powerful and she would know for sure that he would have had the power to prevent the deaths of hundreds of people. She would not judge him kindly. She would be right not to.

"Six."

But did he really have that power? At the count of one, would Moriarty shoot him, and then destroy the tower block anyway, just for fun? Just to prevent the waste of the explosives? So hundreds of people would die today anyway. He had it in his power to prevent that being one more. And ultimately two more, because he knew that John wouldn't survive without her.

"Five."

A thousand memories of Scarlet's life flooded into him. He quivered slightly.

"Four."

He found that he couldn't focus on tomorrow. There was nothing there. He realised then that he was going to die here tonight, in three seconds. He felt strangely calm. He thought that if Scarlet knew, she would be proud of him. John would be too.

"Three."

But Scarlet would never know. And John wouldn't be able to see beyond losing her.

"Two."

He couldn't let them go. He didn't know about the people in the flats. They were irrelevant, as disposable as any human lives. They would be replaceable. Other people would procreate and the gap in the population would be filled and the species as a whole would be none the worse. He couldn't let Scarlet and John go though. They didn't count as just two. They were _important._ His finger wavered over the trigger.

"One."

The sound of the shot was loud and startling. Moriarty looked briefly confused and he pulled his trigger wildly. The bullet hit the tiles besides Sherlock's feet.

Moriarty fell to his knees and then forward, slumped to the ground. There was a moment when Sherlock's brain was completely and utterly blank.

He saw Lestrade standing a few meters away, with John's gun, but he couldn't make any sense of it.

He sat down heavily and blacked out.

He must only have been out for a second. Lestrade was next to him, sitting him up and calling his name.

In a moment, all of it rushed into place in Sherlock's brain and he shoved Lestrade off him.

"What did you do? You stupid, stupid man!"

"Sherlock, he was going to kill you."

"And now Scarlet will die. How dare you choose me over her! How dare you!"

Sherlock grabbed Lestrade and tried to push him but Lestrade was prepared and he held him back.

"Sherlock, you need to focus. I couldn't let him kill you. I couldn't let you destroy a tower block. You need to focus and we need to find Scarlet."

Sherlock slumped back. "I can't, Greg. I can't do it."

"You need to go home. You need to be with John and you need to work with Dimmock and his team and you will find her. But you need to go home now."

"I can't, "Sherlock murmured, "I can't go back there without her. John is... I feel that I have failed every time I look at him."

Lestrade stared at him. "Sherlock, I don't give a flying fuck how it's making you feel. Right now, you are all he has in the world, and you, you stupid man, he's all you've got too, and Scarlet needs you both! However bad it might make you feel when you're there, I guarantee you it will be a million times worse away from him. That's why you were never going to blow up those flats."

Sherlock stared at him.

Lestrade relaxed and looked at Moriarty's body. "Now man up, for God's sake, and go home. I'll stay here and sort out this mess."

Sherlock was so surprised and exhausted that he obeyed without thinking.

oOo

Sherlock walked into the front room, exhausted. John, sitting on the sofa, looked up at him. He looked so hopeful. He clearly believed, without a shadow of a doubt, that Sherlock would find Scarlet and bring her home.

Sherlock wasn't entirely sure how to tell John what he'd just been through. He was clearly expecting better news. Sherlock looked away.

John started silently crying then, fighting hard to control himself, but unable to stop entirely.

Sherlock wasn't sure what to do. A debilitating sense of failure was burning through him. He went to sit next to John and took his hand in his. John leaned against him. They sat, side by side and hand in hand for a while, while John quietly sobbed.

It was several hours later when Sherlock woke up. John was still resting against him with his head on Sherlock's shoulder, sound asleep.

Sherlock rested his cheek against the top of John's head and gently squeezed his hand.

"I don't think you understand how much I love you," he said in a low voice to his sleeping friend. "I know you can't live without her, but I can't live without you. I can't go back to what I was."

He looked across at the mirror, reflecting the map on the wall behind him. There were more crosses and tacks put there by Gregson, detailing what sightings had been reported. There were numbers on the tags, which he realised they must relate to a list of witness statements that must be around somewhere.

He carefully extracted himself from John and started working.

oOo

Scarlet woke up as the dawn was breaking. She was freezing cold and she curled into a ball to slowly warm herself. She looked across at the desk and noticed there was no bread, apple or water for her today. The bucket hadn't been emptied since the night before.

She realised that she was completely alone and she couldn't stop the panic rising. She knew she was badly dehydrated and that however much she might hate Moriarty, she was utterly dependent on him for her survival at the moment. She shivered for a while.

She made herself get up, aching and tired, and retrieved her buckle. She tried to use it to pierce a hole in the window so that she could break the glass but it was the wrong tool for the job and she was too weak to manage it.

She threw herself at the door a number of times getting more and more desperate. Eventually in her desperation she hurt her shoulder badly and she fell to the floor.

She crawled, sobbing, back to the bed, pulled herself onto it, and sat there, hugging her knees and sobbing.

She closed her eyes and prayed.

oOo

John woke up on the sofa and looked around the flat. Sherlock was working at the table.

He cleared his throat. "What do we do now?"

Sherlock appeared not to have heard him. He was scrolling through a list sent to him from Scotland Yard.

John pulled himself and went through to the kitchen where Lestrade was. He'd seen him coming and had stood up to put the kettle on.

"Sorry, I think I stole your bed." John said. Lestrade gave him a small smile. "What do we do now?" John asked him.

Lestrade looked at him for a moment, not knowing quite how to respond. His phone rang and he grabbed it and answered eagerly.

His face changed as he took the call.

"Where?" he said, walking through to the lounge and looking at the map on the wall. "What's the exact address? OK, I'll see you soon."

He hung up.

"Have they found her?" John asked him.

"They've found the car. Here, down in Streatham." He marked it on the map. It was close to a cluster of three sightings of Moriarty.

Sherlock came over and joined them. "There are empty flats here, here and here and… God there's too many."

"I'll send teams now," Lestrade said and got back on the phone.

"Wait," Sherlock told him, dialling his own phone. "Dimmock? Fine, Gregson, I need you to get on the phone to Streatham council and find out if there are any blocks of flats scheduled for demolition this morning. You need to do it quickly. Call me back."

He looked at the clock. It was already nine.

He turned to Lestrade. "We haven't got the time. We should get in a cab now and fine tune it when we're South of the river."

Lestrade nodded and grabbed his coat. John picked up his jacket too.

"No, John," Sherlock told him, "you can't come with us this time."

"Unfortunately, you haven't got time to argue with me so I'm coming."

Sherlock recognised the stubborn look on John's face and realised he'd just have to take him and face the consequences afterwards.

They piled into a cab and headed towards the Thames, finding themselves frustrated by the tail end of the rush hour. Sherlock received a call.

"Where? When? No, that's where she is. Just go there. Yes I'm sure." He hung up and called to the driver. "Henry Dickens Court, Ashward Street."

"How are you sure?" Lestrade asked him.

"Moriarty was so sure about the time last night. He said ten thirty. Something's going to happen to an empty tower block at ten thirty this morning; what could that be? Demolition."

"So you're confident that the water's off at the whole block and not just the one flat."

"Yes. And Moriarty said she was alone."

"Is this a gamble, Sherlock?"

Sherlock glanced across at John who was staring through the window, lost in his own thoughts. He wasn't sure how much he was listening to.

"No," he said.

They were silent for the rest of the journey to Henry Dickens Court. It was a council estate built in the fifties, so quickly and inefficiently that it was deemed unfit for habitation ten years ago and the few remaining tenants had been re-housed. There'd been discussions about fixing the problems but it was found cheaper to tear it all down and start from scratch. The remaining buildings were two ten-story high tower blocks, and three low rise blocks.

There was a small demolition team working in the estate.

"Which is scheduled for demolition today?" Sherlock demanded of them while Lestrade and John were still getting out of the car.

The builders didn't answer directly but looked towards one of the high blocks. Sherlock tore off with John after him.

"Hey, wait!" someone called. "This is a hard hat area! It's unsafe!"

John and Sherlock didn't stop. Sherlock forced the door open and they were through it. Sherlock headed to the central stairwell and tore up it.

"Which flat?" John called to him.

"She can't see the floor. She's up high. We'll start at the top and work our way down."

They raced up eighteen staircases. Sherlock could feel his chest burning by the time he reached to top floor but he pushed himself onwards. There were four flats per floor, accessible by a long balcony running along the outside of the building. They each worked in different directions, breaking doors or windows to get inside each one.

They could see squad cars arriving in the courtyard beneath them but ignored them, focused on the task in hand.

They'd managed three floors when John cut his hand quite badly on a broken window and they forced themselves to slow down.

"Where is she?" John asked again.

Sherlock looked around at the buildings around him.

To the East of the high block they were in, there was a low rise block of flats. The two buildings were stupidly close together; a small alleyway between each building but that was all. Sherlock's eyes widened.

"I was wrong! Shit, I was wrong!" He tore off just as Dimmock arrived, panting on the floor. John ran after him.

"Sherlock?"

"She can't see the floor, not because the flat is too high, but because the angle is wrong. They've build the window up against that alleyway. She's in an end flat on this side."

He ran from the stairs onto one of the floors and checked the angle against the next-door building. They checked the end flat and found it empty. They stood for a moment looking at each other, panting, sweating and exhausted.

"Next floor down," John said and ran out again, Sherlock following to the next floor.

John was in the flat first and he started yelling almost immediately. Sherlock followed him in and in the living room of the flat there were cushions, pillows, a sleeping bag and several bottles of water. There were a couple of fan heaters and a portable TV along with a camping battery.

"Scarlet? Scarlet!" John yelled.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Scarlet could hear someone calling her name. It sounded like her Dad. She waited on the bed, frozen and terrified, not quite understanding what was going on.

She heard the bolts on her door being pulled back. Then he was there, standing in the doorway.

"Scarlet!" he said quietly, staring at her.

He looked like her Dad.

He came to sit with her on the bed, holding his arms out to her, then, when she didn't move pulling her towards him. She noticed the blood on his hand and couldn't work out what that meant.

He felt like her Dad.

She fell towards him, her face buried in his jumper.

He smelled like her Dad.

Her cries seemed to come from a long way away, quiet and low and desperate. She didn't have any tears, she just moaned over and over, shivering and clinging to him. She was terrified that in a second, this would all fade away into nothing.

He cried too. Holding her close to him.

The room was suddenly full of people and Scarlet couldn't quite work out who they were, or where they'd come from, or what they wanted. They kept asking her questions and all she wanted to do was curl up on her Dad's lap and go to sleep. She wanted it all to be over now. She wanted to not wake up again.

Slowly she began to focus. Someone had produced a blanket from somewhere and she was wrapped in it but it didn't seem to help with the cold.

"I'm thirsty," she told them.

Someone gave her a bottle of water and she took it. Her hand was shaking so much she spilled it down herself, and then she gulped and choked.

"Steady, Scarlet. Steady," John said to her. He was still sitting close with his arm around her, holding her up.

She could see Sherlock standing in the doorway. He wasn't looking at her. He was staring at her apple tree.

"I'd like to get her to the ambulance and get some fluids into her," one of the paramedics said to John. "We'll get a stretcher up here. Let me see your arm."

"Scarlet first," John said.

The paramedic smiled. "John, I can do it while we wait for the stretcher. She won't be getting sub-standard care."

John shook his head, but he also smiled and let the paramedic bandage his hand.

The stretcher was produced and Scarlet quietly lay down on it, wondering where she was being taken to now.

Sherlock looked down at her as she was carried past him. She frowned, wondering why he was there. She felt she had something important to tell him, but she couldn't remember what.

As he disappeared from view she could hear him having an urgent discussion with John. She vaguely heard him say he was staying at the flat to help the police and she wished she could ask him to stay with her, but she felt too tired to argue. She closed her eyes for a while.

She was woken by John after she had been secured in the ambulance.

"Scarlet, love, can you try to stay awake for a bit?" he asked her. "It won't be much longer."

"OK."

The paramedic stuck a cannula into her arm and she winced.

"Sorry," he said to her, "it's done now. Can you tell me if anywhere hurts?"

"My head aches. I'm very dizzy. I'm really cold everywhere. My shoulder aches a bit." She sneezed. "I think I'm getting a cold."

"OK, well the good news is I can sort all of that out for you, Scarlet, except maybe the cold."

"That's OK."

"Did you hit your head at all?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Did anyone hit you?"

"No. Yes, the first night, he pulled my arm and smacked me. He pushed me down. I might have hit my head but not hard."

"OK. Good, well done. I'm not going to ask you about anything else to do with that. You just lie back and enjoy the ride and let me know if anything changes, OK?"

"OK. Is Dad still here?"

"I'm here Scarlet."

"Good. Thank you."

She closed her eyes again.

oOo

By the time they got to the hospital, Scarlet was already more alert. She was given more to drink and was starting to calm down and accept that this was indeed reality. She felt exhausted, but hopeful. She was x-rayed and her cracked shoulder blade was strapped up.

Sherlock had been brought to the hospital with Dimmock and Gregson who introduced herself to Scarlet.

"Scarlet, I'm going to take your statement now. Do you think you can do that?"

"Now?" Sherlock asked. "Surely that can wait!"

Gregson turned to look at him. "It can wait, if Scarlet can't manage, but it will have to be done at some point and we've found it works better to get as much out of the way as early as possible. It's better for Scarlet." She turned back to Scarlet. "It really is up to you."

"I don't want to do it now," Scarlet answered. "I'll want to do it less tomorrow though. I just want to go home and forget it all happened. Let's do it now."

"Do you want your parents to leave?"

Scarlet looked over at them, sat side by side on plastic chairs.

"I'm not going to want to say it all over again later, so they should stay if they want."

No one moved.

Slowly, Scarlet recounted everything that she could remember since Saturday evening at the Royal Opera House. Occasionally she stopped for water. Every now and then, she glanced over at John and Sherlock, but they didn't interrupt her or question anything. She noticed that John was gripping Sherlock's wrist tightly, as if he was preventing him leave the room. Gregson gently took her over everything and asked for clarifications where necessary. They were finally done and Scarlet sat back on the bed, exhausted.

A doctor appeared and re-checked her blood pressure and temperature.

"You're still a little chilly," she told her. "I think it might be wise to keep you here overnight."

"No! Please no," Scarlet said. "I just want to go home. I want to have a long, long bath, put on clean clothes, and go to sleep all night in my own bed, with my own duvet and pillows. In the morning I'll be fine."

"OK," the doctor smiled. "As long as you promise to rest and take things slowly."

"I will. Absolutely."

"I'm going to send a letter to your own GP too. I want you to go and see him next week to discuss how you're feeling with him. Do you promise you'll do that?"

Scarlet nodded.

"I'll look after her," John assured her. "If I'm remotely worried about anything I'll bring her right back."

"OK. I'm happy with that. She's still just about a minor, so would you mind signing some paperwork for me?"

"Sure." He followed her out of the room.

Scarlet was alone with Sherlock. He still hadn't spoken to her or even looked at her. She suddenly felt very nervous of him. She realised she must have put him out quite a bit.

"Sherlock?"

He looked at her now and smiled. He still looked sad through the smile and she worried for him.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock. I should have listened."

"No, no. It was bound to happen. We couldn't lock you in your room and he was always going to get to you, if not on Saturday then at another time. Part of me's impressed that we managed four days before it happened. Don't be sorry, Scarlet. This wasn't your fault."

"What's happened to Moriarty?"

"He's dead."

"Oh." She suddenly started sobbing again, more normally this time, and Sherlock jumped up and went over to her.

"Scarlet..." he didn't know how to continue.

She tried to stop calm herself and stop crying. "Were my clues OK?"

"Yes, Scarlet. Your clues were perfect. Utterly perfect."

She nodded, then her face crumpled again and she cried.

"I felt so stupid! I just felt so stupid."

Sherlock finally reached out for her and pulled her to him. She clung on for a while, just crying for a while.

John came back in and found them like that.

"We're free to leave if you're ready," he told them. "Whenever you're ready to go. Take your time."

They broke apart and Scarlet nodded and slowly and carefully she got to her feet.

oOo

Scarlet was welcomed home by Mrs Hudson to many tears and cups of tea. She eventually got to have her bath, she dressed in clean clothing and after an evening of staring blankly and yawning at each other they all went to bed.

An hour later, John was woken by a knock at his door.

"Dad?" Scarlet whispered. "Are you awake?"

"Yes, Scarlet, are you OK?" He sat up in bed and looked over at her.

"Mm, yes. Only I can't sleep. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up back there."

"Oh Scarlet, come here."

She came over and perched on John's bed and he hugged her.

"Can I sleep in your bed?"

John paused for a moment. "Under usual circumstances, of course yes, but unfortunately Sherlock's already in it."

"Oh, so he is." She said, glancing over. She thought about this for a moment. "Why is Sherlock in your bed?"

John thought about it too. "It's complicated," he said finally.

He could almost hear her smirk. "What, like Facebook's 'it's complicated', or like Sherlock's 'it's complicated'?"

John snorted. "He's a bit… disoriented. That's all. Don't worry; he'll be fine in a bit."

"Did he get hurt?"

"Not physically. Just shocked. We all were. We'll all get better. OK?"

Sherlock stirred and rolled over. "John? What is it? What's going on?"

"Nothing, it's OK, Scarlet's a bit anxious, go back to sleep."

"She should sleep in your bed. That helps."

"She can't. You're in it."

"I could move up."

"You could get out."

Scarlet giggled suddenly and John smiled and felt some of the tension leaving his body at the sound.

"Actually, Dad, I think I'm going to be OK now. Thank you."

"Are you sure? We can go and sleep in Sherlock's bed."

"No I'll be fine. See you in the morning."

"Yes. Christmas Eve, we've got decorating to do."

"And the flat's a state. I can't believe how you let the place go in my absence."

John pulled her in for a hug and kissed her forehead. "Good night, Scarlet." Sherlock reached over and held her hand briefly.

She left and they both lay back.

"God she's resilient," Sherlock said.

"Mm. She's Mary's child in that. She's doing better than me."

"Me too."

John groped in the darkness for Sherlock's hand, which he squeezed. In response Sherlock rolled over and wrapped his arms around John, resting his head on John's chest.

"Er, Sherlock? What are you doing?" John asked.

"Trying to get some sleep if you'd just shut up."

"Oh. Why on me though?"

"Lestrade told me to 'man up'."

"Greg did? When?"

"After Moriarty."

"Oh." John considered this a moment. "I'm not sure this is what he had in mind."

"Can't think what else he might mean." Sherlock responded.

"OK then. Well, good night."

"Good night. Now shut up."

Sherlock's breathing slowed and ten minutes later he was asleep again. Five minutes after that, John was too.

oOo

Christmas day dawned. As tradition dictated, Scarlet excelled herself with the decorating of the flat, and John was woken early by Sherlock.

They had more than the usual amount of visitors, who all seemed to be grateful for the excuse to pop in.

It was mid-afternoon when Mycroft appeared in the living room.

"For heaven's sake," said Sherlock, "are people going to be just walking in and out forever? Are we ever going to re-establish some level of normality so we can keep unwanted people out?"

Scarlet smiled though.

"Hello, Mycroft."

"Good morning, Scarlet." He looked at her as if she might suddenly dissolve into nothingness. "Are you... quite well?"

She had found herself regularly exhausted over the past few days, and when this happened she retreated to the sofa where John was happy to bundle her up with a pillow and a duvet.

"Quite well, yes. Thank you," she replied with a smile.

"Good, good." He looked round at the audience in the room. "Good. Good."

"Well it was good of you to visit," Sherlock told him. "Now please leave."

"Sherlock," John said in a warning tone. "Would you like some tea, Mycroft?"

"That would be lovely, thank you, John."

"I'll make it," Scarlet said, starting to get up.

She was instantly met by a chorus of "No, no!" and "Don't get up."

"I'm not feeble," she pointed out. "I can make tea."

Mrs Hudson had already put the kettle on so she stayed where she was, curled up on the sofa, under her duvet.

Mycroft walked across the room and sat down on a dining chair next to her.

"Here, Scarlet, I'd like you to have this." He held a key out towards her.

She frowned, but took it. "What is it?"

"It's the key to the flat in Streatham. I bought it for you."

Scarlet quickly put it down on the coffee table and stared at it. Her face was suddenly pale and her mouth was twisted as if she was fighting nausea.

Mycroft glanced quickly at John, who had a similar expression and was gripping Scarlet's duvet tightly.

"Was this wrong?" Mycroft asked, confused.

"No!" Scarlet said quickly. "No, no, it's just..." she took a deep breath, "it's just something of a shock. I mean... actually, yes, Mycroft, I think it is a bit wrong. You've bought me the flat that I was held hostage in for three days. I'm really not sure I want to own it. I mean... two days ago ... I was there, and I couldn't leave." She wiped her eyes.

"Sorry. I'm sorry," Mycroft said. "I didn't buy you... Oh dear. I'm sorry. I didn't intend to upset you."

She gave him a watery smile but didn't speak. Mycroft was aware that Sherlock was looking at him as if he was going to kill him.

"Scarlet, I'm sorry," Mycroft said again, "I didn't intend to buy you the flat. I hired people to look at your picture with a view to moving it, but there was no way of removing the plaster from the wall without destroying the work forever, so then I suggested that we moved the whole wall which seemed reasonable, but it turns out it's not as simple as that. The walls are all unsound you see; they're crumbling. The only thing for it was to buy the entire flat. But then it occurred to me that the intellectual property of the picture, which was the only part I was interested in, was yours. So it seemed right to give you the whole flat. I really didn't intend to upset you. It hadn't occurred to me..."

She listened to him, absorbing all of this.

"You bought me a flat for the sake of a picture I scratched onto a wall?"

"Yes." He smiled apologetically.

"You really are your own special breed of strange, aren't you?"

He smiled, feeling he was being forgiven. "Yes."

She wiped her eyes again. "Mycroft, it's just a picture. I can do you another one. Probably better."

"Yes," he looked at her for a moment. "The thing is, Scarlet, that it's not just a picture. I don't think I've ever witnessed such an act of bravery first hand."

She gazed at the key. "Mm. 'Bravery' is by far the kindest word for stupidity, don't you think?"

Mycroft jumped and glanced over at John who was still staring at the key. "No, Scarlet. No, I think I may have been mistaken when I said that. It was a long, long time ago, and I was wrong."

"It was quite stupid though. Moriarty told me I should have used the energy to escape. He's right; I didn't even try until the last moment."

"Moriarty was wrong," Sherlock said quickly.

Scarlet shrugged.

"No, Scarlet," Mycroft said. "You made something beautiful in a horrible place. You found something to do so you wouldn't give up. There was nothing you could have done to escape him, so you did something else instead. It was brave."

Two stray tears fell from her face. She picked up the key and handed it back to him. "Mycroft, I'd like you to have it. In fact, I think they should go ahead and demolish it. It's a good brown-field site, people need places to live, the council should go ahead with their plans and demolish and rebuild. There's a good chance some people could have happy homes there in the future."

He nodded and took back the key.

"In fact, I'd like you to have this too." She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out the buckle.

He looked at it and frowned. "What is it?"

"It's a belt buckle. It's a symbol. You'll figure it out."

He nodded and pocketed it. "So, what will be next for Scarlet Watson?"

She thought about this. "Well, currently I'm wondering if I should go and draw an apple tree on a Mercedes or something."

"Well if you want a Mercedes..." Mycroft started.

"For Heaven's sake, Mycroft, you're not buying her a Mercedes!" John told him. "Learn! Learn for your mistake with the flat!"

Scarlet laughed. "There are still A' levels to take, and university to go to."

"Yes. Still interested in Central St. Martins?"

"Maybe. But actually, I'm thinking I might go a bit further afield."

Everyone frowned.

"Why?" Mrs Hudson asked, handing tea to Mycroft. "I was thinking of getting the basement flat sorted out for you, so you'd have a bit more privacy."

John looked at her and smiled.

Scarlet shrugged. "I don't know. I personally think I'm exempt from making any decisions or filling any forms for the next two weeks, but I'm beginning to feel as though I'd like to be away from London for a while. Not too far, but I'm quite interested in Brighton. Their Art department there is really good."

Mycroft looked over at John. "And you'll let her do this?"

"I wouldn't stop her." He smiled. "I think she should be allowed to do wherever she wants to."

"You know he says this now, but when she paints the hallway blue, it's an entirely different story," Sherlock told them.

oOo

Later on, Scarlet went to find Sherlock in his room.

"Did you think I'd forgotten your present?" she asked him.

"Present? No, of course not. You have had a few other distractions of late, Scarlet."

"Well either way, I found time to make this." She handed him a smallish gift, about the size of a largish cigar box, and sat down on his bed to watch him open it. He put down the books he'd been arranging and started tearing the paper off. When he uncovered his drugs box, he almost dropped it in shock.

"I asked Mycroft for it and he gave it to me," Scarlet explained.

"Was it... empty?" he asked her.

"It was then. It's not now."

He opened it. She'd lined it with a velvet-backed cushion and on it was a domino-sized bar of silver. Scarlet had etched words onto it. 'I love you'. He turned it over and on the back was a small etching of a tree and the words 'Thank you'.

He sat down next to her, picked up bar and held it in his hand for a long while.

"Is it OK?" she asked him.

"Yes it's fine." His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. "It's perfect Scarlet."

He hugged her for a long while.

"Right. He said finally, "let's finish Christmas." They went downstairs to find John.

* * *

**And I'm going to leave them there.**

**Once again, thank you for the reviews! I'm sorry that this one was so harrowing for all concerned (though I did warn you). In the pipeline I have half of a 'Giant Rat of Sumatra', and I'd quite like to do a Christmas one-shot, but to be completely honest, I'm working on the novel now (hurrah!) and I'm feeling vaguely focussed on that. Anyone interested in doing some reading of that, please feel free to PM me (not that I'm promising much particularly soon, I haven't even completed the skeleton of it yet).**

**I'm not vanishing into nothing though. Just vague, vague plans at the moment though.**

**Wonderful, lovely support from all as usual. Huge amounts of spontaneous applause to reviewers. You do an excellent job!**

**Pip.  
**


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